Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what proportion of funds under the 2007-13 European Regional Development Fund which were committed after May 2010 have not yet been drawn down.

The full £2.7 billion European Regional Development Fund allocation for 2007-13 has been committed, and is on track and on course for where we would expect to be at this stage in the programme.

The programme is worth a total of £2,749,090,730 excluding match funding. Since 1 May 2010, the current programme has contracted projects worth a total value of £1,365,042,943.

Of that, £816,874,958 has been paid out from the European Regional Development Fund and £548,167,985 remains to be claimed by grant recipients. All activity, outputs and spend must be completed by September 2015, and recipients then have until the end of December 2015 to submit their claims for expenditure incurred.

As outlined to the hon. Member in the answer to him of 26 November 2014, Question 206317, the 2000-06 programme under the last Labour Government was poorly administered; only 93% of the allocation was ever committed, leaving £311 million of uncommitted resources.

This Government has overhauled the administration of the 2007-13 programme, and cleaned up the mess left behind on the 2000-06 programme, and at the same time, navigated through the reams of complex European Commission bureaucracy around the programme.