Cumbria awarded £60m in levelling up funds

Improving connectivity to the Port of Workington will be the focus of money awarded to Allerdale Borough Council

Cumbria has been awarded more than £60m in government levelling up funds - with road, bridge and industrial projects set to benefit.

In Copeland, £20m will part-fund the creation of an "enterprise cluster".

Cumbria County Council will receive £18m to upgrade 18.5 miles (30km) of roads and a number of bridges.

An extra £9.5m will fund highways and town centre schemes in Workington with £16m for a town centre revamp in Barrow, the government said.

The awards were part of £2.1bn for projects nationally announced by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The county council said its award would enable a "comprehensive programme of improvements" on the A5086 between Cockermouth and Egremont, the A595 south of Sellafield and the A590 through Barrow.

'Improves everyday life'

Work will include resurfacing, drainage and bridge repairs.

Councillor Keith Little, cabinet member for highways and transport said: "The government's Levelling Up Fund is designed to invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life, and these schemes will do just that.

"This work will provide a more resilient highway network, improving access to employment opportunities and services which are essential to help connect people with the places they need to get to."

Analysis

By Michael Wild, Editor, Politics North

The government has made plenty of promises to level up the North, but meeting the expectations it has raised since 2019 is proving difficult.

The collapse of Britishvolt's plans for a giant new factory in Northumberland making car batteries put a dent in the government's levelling-up rhetoric this week.

So Rishi Sunak might have hoped that unveiling a new list of successful levelling up bids would restore some of the shine and prove the party was sticking to its commitments to raise up poorer and more deprived regions.

The problem is that wherever there are winners, there are inevitably losers too. The North East and Cumbria did receive £175m spread around projects in Gateshead, Teesside and west Cumbria.

But other areas - like North Shields and Wallsend - were unsuccessful in their bids. Then there's the thorny issue of how money is allocated between regions.

As the North East has the highest unemployment rate and some of the worst levels of deprivation, there's an expectation it will get the most funding. But on this occasion London and the South East had more successful projects and more cash - although of course it also has far more people living there and its own pockets of deprivation.

A total of 111 areas across the UK have been awarded money from the second round of the government's £2.1bn Levelling Up Fund.

The Institute for Government has said councils' central government grants - including retained business rates - were cut 37% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2019-20, from £41.0bn to £26.0bn in 2019-20 prices.

Ann Thomson, Barrow Borough Council leader, described the area's regeneration money as a "cause for huge celebration" with plans in place to update the area's Market Hall.

Two smaller awards for projects in the county have also come from the government's £150m UK Community Ownership Fund.

Keswick Youth Centre Services CIO is to receive £250,000 to buy, renovate and operate the Grade II-listed Keswick School of Industrial Art building, while £300,000 was allocated to The Roxy Collective in South Lakeland.