North councils spend millions to get Levelling Up grants

Towns Fund money will help train young people in Hartlepool civil engineering

Councils in the north of England have spent millions of pounds preparing bids for government Levelling Up grants.

Freedom of Information requests by BBC News reveal 22 councils in the North East and Cumbria spent a total of more than £4.6m.

The "time-consuming" process of bidding for competitive funds was criticised by academics last week.

The government said the area's £37 per person Levelling Up funding was "the second highest for an English region".

"We are making progress across the North East," a spokesperson from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said.

Teesside Freeport had created "thousands of highly-skilled jobs" and the Towns Fund had supported "refurbishing derelict properties in Hartlepool and new skills facilities in Blyth", they said.

Prof Joyce Liddle said much of the grant funding had not been spent

BBC News asked councils how much they had spent bidding for the Levelling Up Fund, the Towns Fund and the Future High Streets Fund, all of which are associated with the government's levelling-up agenda.

The total figure came to £4.65m, while the authorities secured funding of £309m as a result of the bids.

Some councils said most or all of the cost had been met by "capacity funding" from central government.

Prof Joyce Liddle from Northumbria University's Business School said authorities "had to get things together very quickly".

A lot "lacked the capacity" to do so and many had to use consultants to help draw up their bids, she said.

There was also "not a great deal of transparency" and councils did not know why they had been, or had not been, successful.

Of those who were awarded money, many did not have the capacity or skills base to deliver on the capital projects, with many using only 3-6% of the funds so far, she added.

Hartlepool College of Further Education principal Darren Hankey said investing in training was a "no brainer"

Hartlepool received £25m from the Towns Fund, after the council spent more than £200,000 on bids for that and the Levelling Up Fund.

Some of the money has gone towards training facilities run by Hartlepool College of Further Education.

Principal Darren Hankey said the bids "take time" with, as an example, the board working on the Town Deal for three years.

"They're competitive; there's no guarantee you'll get that money," he said.

"You have to jump through lots of hoops.

"It's just the time and effort to get that money where, over the last decade, that investment has been short in coming."

The government's Levelling Up White Paper in February referred to the "complexity in the funding landscape" and promised to set out a plan to "streamline" the process this year.