Committee questions ‘not impartial’ Towns Fund selections

Scrutinising the £3.6 billion Towns Fund, the Public Accounts Committee says it is ‘not convinced by the rationales for selecting some towns and not others’.

The fund was introduced at pace by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in summer 2019, with ministers selecting towns to receive funding from a ranked list prepared by officials.

However, a new report by the PAC says it is ‘not convinced by the rationales for selecting some towns and not others’, finding the justification offered by ministers for selecting individual towns to be ‘vague and based on sweeping assumptions’ and raising concerns over the decisions being politically motivated.  

According to the cross-party group of MPs, in some cases, towns were chosen by ministers despite being identified by officials as the very lowest priority - for example, one town selected ranked 535th out of 541 towns.

They also accuse ministers of not being open about the process it followed and not disclosing the reasoning for selecting or excluding towns. This lack of transparency has fuelled accusations of political bias in the selection process, and is a risk to the Civil Service’s reputation for integrity and impartiality.

Concerning finance, MHCLG says that it wanted to give money to towns which it deemed unlikely to have the expertise to succeed at bidding for funding through an open competition; which, the committee warns, also raises concerns about whether those towns will have the capacity to spend the money well.

Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, said: “In our programme of work on the government response to the Covid pandemic, we have begun to see the grim, potentially huge costs of public spending made in haste and without all the usual, legal checks and controls. That makes it all the less acceptable to now be looking at billions of pounds handed out in an opaque process that has every appearance of having been politically motivated - long before Covid struck.

“Now, when every penny counts, and when some towns that won funding will almost certainly have to redirect it to fill the massive holes the pandemic has blown in their budgets, MHCLG must be open and transparent about the decisions it made to hand out those £billions of taxpayers’ money, and what it expects to deliver.”

Steve Reed, Labour’s Shadow Communities Secretary, commented: “This report raises yet more questions about the government’s misuse of taxpayers’ money. Scandal-prone Robert Jenrick deprived more deserving towns of funding so he could funnel it into Conservative target seats ahead of the General Election.

“The Secretary of State must now publish the Accounting Officer’s findings because the public deserve to know if their money was used to benefit the Conservative Party instead of the struggling towns and high streets it was intended for.”