Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much funding has been awarded to the Coalfields Regeneration Trust in each year since 2010.

In 2010, the previous Administration initiated a review of coalfields regeneration; this was completed in September 2010 and the Government’s response was published in March 2011 – as summarised in the Written Ministerial Statement by my rt. hon. Friend, the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), on 10 March 2011, Official Report, Column 74WS. This outlined a four year programme to make the Trust self-financing, and a tapered level of funding. As laid out in that approach, funding to the Trust was £17.7 million in 2010-11, £16 million in 2011-12, £14 million in 2012-13, £12 million in 2013-14 and will be £10 million in 2014-15.

In line with the strategy, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust will no longer receive financial support from DCLG after March 2015, but they have been allowed to invest grant in assets, whilst still adhering to their core objectives of supporting coalfields communities to enable them to generate an income from 2015 onwards. The Trust now has a strong portfolio of investment and an opportunity to concentrate on the areas where they add value.

In addition, the Homes and Communities Agency’s Coalfields Programme has invested over £660 million in coalfields project. The land assets associated with Coalfields Projects are expected to form part of the Homes and Communities Agency’s upcoming programme to dispose of Public Sector Land.

DCLG’s Coalfields Funds have also been investing in innovative small and medium firms in deprived former coalfields areas and will continue to do so until mid-2016, as per the June 2009 contractual agreement with the Coalfields Growth Fund partnership. As of 30 June 2014 the Funds have invested £16.9 million in total.

More broadly, the Government’s approach is to provide local leaders, residents and businesses with the powers, flexibilities, options and incentives to put them in the driving seat to regenerate their area, strengthen their local economy, and improve their opportunities.

As part of its long-term economic plan to secure Britain’s future, the Government has agreed a series of Growth Deals with businesses and local authorities across England which will provide support for local businesses to train young people, create thousands of new jobs, build thousands of new homes and start hundreds of infrastructure projects; including transport improvements and superfast broadband networks. There is a real opportunity for the Local Enterprise Partnerships which cover former coalfield areas to take a major role in taking forward regeneration locally.