LOCAL development funds by the EU could be put “into reverse” by the UK Government, two former senior regional organisers have said.

There are fears among those involved in setting up local funding that the UK will fail to give them the amount of cash the EU did, The National has been told.

Those in the sector say the history of regional policy in the UK points to a system of centralisation instead of one that lets local communities decide how and where their money is spent.

Tony Fitzpatrick is a former coordinator at the European Rural Exchange based in Dumfries in Galloway, an EU-wide grassroots organisation that lobbied governments for local funding.

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He said the EU’s history of community funding stemmed from an overarching goal to ensure Europe maintained peace, and that part of that was to reduce inequality across its regions and increase social cohesion.

“Cohesion goes way back to post-war Europe and looking at the causes for two European wars,” Fitzpatrick said.

This contrasts to the UK Governments, he added, which has never been a “great fan of regional policy”

“They don't really do it,” he continued. “They do centralised policy - it's very top-down.

“The 20-odd years that I dealt with regional policy, it was always a struggle at UK level.

“So we put together a national network that gave us access to those civil service departments. We had memberships spread across Europe.

“And within a couple of years, I found us really getting really to the top table in the European institutions.”

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Fitzpatrick said while the EU was reported as “faceless bureaucrats” by some UK media, that wasn’t his experience.

He said: “You could meet with them, they treated you as equals, they wanted to hear your experiences at grassroots level, and the problems you were up against.

“By contrast, meeting with the civil service departments in the UK, you were treated politely, but in my view was, you were never really taken seriously."

To replace these EU funds, the Government has announced its Levelling Up agenda, including the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. But Fitzpatrick reckons it will be “very much centrally driven”.

He continued: “I think there's there is suspicion around how bottom up the involvement will be at a regional level. I'll be very surprised if we see things like local partnerships being set up in the way that were under the previous structural funds.

“I think they will really struggle to come up with something that's a genuinely sub regional set of programmes for funding.

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“I do know that down here that are a lot of nervous businesses. There's a lot of nervousness in the voluntary sector, who were strongly supported by those programmes, and the old structural funds.

“I have yet to see evidence that whatever's planned for the future is going to support that level of community empowerment and community-led local development.

“I have kind of fears and doubts that the UK Government doesn't really fundamentally understand or support the notion of bottom-up community-led development. I sometimes feel a sense of mistrust from them."

 

Mark Copsey, a lecturer in the business school in Leeds Beckett University, and a former leader in local funding in Yorkshire, agreed.

He said local funding by the UK Government has always been small compared to the EU and he fears the UK won’t step up to cover the post-Brexit funding shortfall.

He said: “I've been involved in economic development since 1988 and all of the programmes have been EU funded. The amount of local funding from the UK Government funding has always been relatively small.

“I worked in North Yorkshire for a number of years. And we used to have, I think it was half a million pounds of Rural Development Commission funding coming in, and when we got European funding that went up to £6 million.

“It doesn't get anywhere near the same priority from the UK Government - whatever party is in power. The biggest Levelling Up Fund that existed in the UK has been Europe. But that's now gone.

“Now it's all at the beck and call of London almost.

“All the evidence suggests that the amount of money available is significantly less than what was there for European funding. 

“I suspect, to a degree that funding is obviously going to be less because, in effect, the UK Government used to provide some of the match funding for the EU funding.

“And I suspect they're at the same level they were before, but without any EU funding.

“What it means, in reality, is simply not clear, as far as most partners are concerned.”

Scottish Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work Richard Lochhead said: “The UK Government has consistently refused to engage with devolved administrations in any meaningful way or provide basic information about the Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF), despite it being due to start in April 2022.

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“It is concerning that long-running EU support, which has been of enormous benefit to Scotland, may not be matched by the UK Government’s proposals to replace European funding with the centrally administered SPF.

“The UK Government is putting the devolution settlement at risk by deciding itself how the SPF will be spent in areas of devolved responsibility when it should be for the Scottish Government to set its own priorities.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “This is fundamentally incorrect. We will ramp up UK-wide domestic funding to at least match what the EU currently offers - reaching around £1.5 billion a year - through the new UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

“This Fund, to be launched in 2022, will operate throughout the UK and play a part in uniting and levelling up the whole country.  “We have been engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in Scotland and across all parts of the UK to identify the opportunities for UKSPF policy, learning lessons from EU funding.”