Rishi Sunak gives his own wealthy constituency £19m to 'level-up'

18 January 2023 , 22:30

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Rishi Sunak gives his own wealthy constituency £19m to 'level-up'

Rishi Sunak is handing his leafy, rural constituency £19million taxpayers’ cash to “level-up”.

The multi-millionaire Prime Minister, worth an estimated £730m with wife Akshata Murty, announced the cash for his seat in Richmond, North Yorks as he unveiled 111 projects to receive funds from a £2.1billion government pot.

Documents show the £19m will be used “to transform Catterick Garrison town centre”.

They say: “This includes new routes for walking and cycling, a new town square, and a new community facility that will host new businesses and a community kitchen.”

In August, video emerged of former Chancellor Mr Sunak speaking in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where he told Tory activists: "We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone.

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"I started the work of undoing that."

The project gets the cash in the latest tranche of awards from the Levelling-Up Fund.

Downing Street said the £2.1bn of total grants announced tonight include £672m to boost transport links, £821m to “kickstart community regeneration” and £594m “to restore local heritage sites”.

Projects to benefit include the include Eden Project North tourist attraction in Morecambe, Lancs, which gets £50m to “transform Morecambe’s seafront into an Eden by the Bay”; there is £40m for an artificial intelligence campus in Blackpool; and £50m for a Cornish direct rail service linking Newquay, St Austell, Truro and Falmouth.

But analysts said London was getting more cash - £151m - than the North East which gets £108m and Yorkshire and Humber which gets £120m.

The biggest regional winner was the North West, with £354m.

The PM said: “Through greater investment in local areas, we can grow the economy, create good jobs and spread opportunity everywhere.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled the latest trance of cash from the Levelling-Up Fund

“That’s why we are backing more than 100 projects with new transformational funding to level up local communities across the United Kingdom.

“By reaching even more parts of the country than before, we will build a future of optimism and pride in people’s lives and the places they call home.”

Campaigners for the North were disappointed the region did not receive more money.

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Northern Powerhouse Partnership chief executive Henri Murison said: “The North is getting roughly a third of the total amount for England, marginally below our first phase proportion.

Northern Powerhouse Partnership director Henri Murison (Courtesy of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership)

“This is a long way off the radical economic transformation we were promised and will not make a material difference to closing the North-South divide in productivity.”

The first batch of grants from the Levelling-Up Fund saw £1.7bn unlocked for 105 projects in 2021.

But Labour said only a fraction of the cash had been received.

Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “The Levelling-Up Fund is in chaos, beset by delays and allegations of favouritism.

Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary Lisa Nandy (Getty Images)

“Fifteen months after the first round of allocations, just 5% of the money has made it to the communities who were promised it - and despite today’s announcement, communities across the country are still paying a Tory premium for the last 13 years.

“It takes an extraordinary arrogance to expect us to be grateful for a partial refund on the money they have stripped out of our communities, which has decimated vital local services like childcare, buses and social care.

“It is time to end this Hunger Games-style contest where communities are pitted against one another and Whitehall ministers pick winners and losers.”

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Ben Glaze