SCOTLAND could lose out on millions in cash after the UK Government’s Pride in Place funding is set to replace an existing scheme.
The Herald reports that local authorities were informed on Wednesday that the Pride in Place fund will supersede the Shared Prosperity Fund. Councils had assumed the new cash would be in addition to the money already promised.
The £76 million a year Scotland was due to receive from the prosperity fund now appears as if it will be halved – to £36m.
The Scotland Office have insisted that the "claim is simply not true".
According to the newspaper, councils were told most of this would be capital funding, leaving just £17m in annual revenue funding for the whole of Scotland.
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The details of the change were revealed on Thursday morning at a meeting of Glasgow City Council’s City Administration Committee.
The SNP administration put forward a motion which expressed “deep concern about the announcement that the Pride in Place Fund is not new Additional Funding and the impact of that will in effect be a reduction in funding to the City of Glasgow through the Shared Prosperity Fund”.
SNP councillors called on the local authority’s chief executive to “write to the UK Government and all Glasgow MPs expressing our deep concern and urgently ask them to reconsider this position”.
Labour councillors debated whether to abstain, welcome the cut or join the SNP and Greens in opposing it for 20 minutes, the Herald reported.
Last week, they had claimed Glasgow would receive up to £40m plus £1.5m for community-led improvements.
Labour eventually submitted an amendment asking the authority’s chief executive to “write to UK Government to seek clarification on the funding settlement and budgetary implications and to ensure best value for Glasgow”.
The change would see the allocation to the Glasgow City Region drop from £33m to £7m. The City of Glasgow receives £9m each year, but could see this drop to £2m.
The Pride in Place programme was announced shortly after Keir Starmer’s reshuffle in September.
Keir Starmer described the £292m programme as a central pillar of Labour’s “Plan for Change”.
He claimed it was the “largest transfer of power from Whitehall to communities in history”.
The programme will see £280m shared across 12 councils, with a further £20m each spread over the next decade.
Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander said at the time that the programme was “direct funding from the Scotland Office to local communities the length and breadth of Scotland”.
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“It is delivering on a manifesto commitment that the Scotland Office will be a spending department, targeting UK Government money directly at some of the biggest challenges we face here in Scotland,” he added.
“This money will ensure that local people are in the lead in meeting local problems and it reflects our commitment that after a decade of austerity, a decade of renewal is now underway.
“For too long, people have watched their towns and streets decline — powerless to stop boarded-up shops and neglected parks. That ends now.”
A UK Government spokesperson said: "The claim is simply not true.
"Our approach will see an extensive package of targeted long-term support in place from next year – at the same value as it is now.
"In addition to this, the UK Government is continuing to invest more than £1.8 billion to deliver economic growth and a decade of national renewal for communities the length and breadth of Scotland.
"And we are working closely with and supporting the Scottish Government through the largest real terms settlement in the history of devolution for spending on policies that are key levers to improving living standards."
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