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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the criteria was for the selection of the 100 places to benefit from the recently announced new Towns Fund.

As part of the process of identifying the initial 100 places, towns have been chosen on the basis of a robust selection methodology. This took into account various qualitative and quantitative indicators. These included income deprivation, skills, productivity, EU exit exposure, economic shocks, investment opportunities, and policy alignment.