Reading Borough Council has laid out how it is aiming to spend millions in Government ‘levelling up funding’ to improve the town.
Councillors recently received a report on how the administration wants to spend funding from Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
The council could be receiving a total of £40 million funding if bids it makes are 100 per cent successful.
It is asking for £20 million to revitalise The Hexagon and relocate the Reading Central Library collection into the council offices as part of a cultural funding bid.
The council is also bidding for an additional £20 million in funding for a ‘package’ of sustainable transport projects, which includes enhancing walking and cycling links and improving access to the South Reading Mass Rapid Transit scheme, which has been devised to speed up bus journeys along the A33 between the town centre and Green Park.
But there is no guarantee that the council will receive the funding as they are dependent on the Government approving bids to be successful.
The administration has also laid out how it aims to spend funding it has been allocated.
It has been allocated £1 million from the Government’s ‘shared prosperity fund’, which will be over three years.
But this £1 million is subject to a spending plan which had to be submitted on Monday, August 1, and signed off by the Department of Levelling Up.
The council aims to spend £95,124 in 2022/23, £190,249 in 2023/24 and £714,627 in 224/25.
It has also received £711,702 as part of the ‘multiply’ programme to help adults with maths, which is subject to an investment plan which was sent to the Government at the end of June.
Cllr Adele Barnet-Ward (Labour, Thames), Reading Borough Council’s lead for leisure and culture, criticised the ‘very prescriptive’ way in which Government funding is allocated ‘in little pots’.
She said: “We have to somehow make that work for Reading.
“That being said, we have managed to produce in the levelling up funding bids for the Minster Quarter and the library something that is really exciting and that does speak to our ambitions for Reading.”
And council leader, Cllr Jason Brock (Labour, Southcote), also voiced his frustration at the need for the council’s bids and spending plans would have to go back to the Department of Levelling Up for approval.
He said: “It is really problematic that a Government that speaks so much about the merits of devolution and the potential for levelling up will not devolve the powers to local authorities that would allow them to get on with those jobs in their local areas.”
He added that felt that the current system of funding was ‘dysfunctional’ and looked forward to the mechanism for funding bids and allocations being changed in the future.
The administration’s plans for the funding were unanimously approved at a policy committee meeting on Monday, July 11.
