Council gets provisional £5m levelling-up arts cash

North Northamptonshire Council, based in the Corby Cube, will consider projects to spend the money on

A council has welcomed up to £5m of provisional government levelling-up funding to support local culture projects.

The money for North Northamptonshire was announced as part of the spring Budget on Wednesday.

It must now draw up an investment plan to submit to the government after consultation with local organisations.

Leader of the council, Jason Smithers, said any funding it received "will be used to develop and improve the culture" in the area.

The Conservative-run authority previously missed out on money from the government's Levelling Up Fund.

Mr Smithers said: "We welcome this funding announcement from central government and await further detail on next steps."

He said the council would work to "identify suitable projects as well as looking at our recently adopted Culture, Tourism and Heritage Business Plan".

Earlier this year it approved an £856,000 budget for the plan a week after it introduced spending controls.

Labour have criticised the Levelling Up Fund saying the money awarded was dwarfed by the cuts to local authority funding since 2010.