Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Answer of 8 February 2016 to Question 25741, what criteria the Government plans to use to allocate the funds secured from the European Social Fund for the period 2014-2020.

EU regulations require the United Kingdom to spend at least 45.9 per cent of its national allocation for structural funds for the period 2014-2020 on the European Social Fund (ESF). The United Kingdom’s Partnership Agreement with the European Commission, which can be found on GOV.UK at ‘European Structural and Investment Funds: UK Partnership Agreement’, sets out how the requirement was met.

Within England, notional allocations for the European Regional Development Fund and ESF were made on the basis of Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) areas. The total allocations to each LEP area for the 2014-2020 period can be found on the GOV.UK website at ‘EU Structural Funds: UK allocations 2014 to 2020’. Each LEP area was asked how much it wanted to devote to the ESF, drawing on guidance issued by Government to ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements at national level. The guidance can also be found on the GOV.UK website. Iinformation on the Strategies for 2014-2020 prepared by each LEP area can be found on the website ‘The Network of LEPs-LEP Network’, searching by European funding. These set out how much each proposed should be spent on ESF in their area.

Management of EU structural funds is devolved. The Devolved Administrations decide the criteria for allocation of ESF within their remits, taking account of the need to meet EU regulatory requirements.