Government 'leaves West Yorkshire £37m worse off than it was under the EU'

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) said the region would receive only two-thirds of a fund designed to replace EU grants lost due to Brexit.

WYCA said West Yorkshire would receive £83m from the £2.6bn UK Shared Prosperity Fund, instead of the £120m it would have received from EU regional funds.

The Conservative’s 2019 manifesto promised “at a minimum” to match the average EU subsidy of about £1.5bn a year to help the most deprived parts of the UK.

Announcing the funding last week for a period until March 2025, the Government insisted the regions are “all receiving at least as much as they did before, while also being free from bureaucratic EU processes and having greater say in how the money is used”.

But WYCA said promises by Ministers to approve local investment plans for the fund by October had been repeatedly pushed back. The delays now meant just four months were left to deliver projects before the end of the financial year.

WYCA criticised an “unnecessarily burdensome” approach, alongside requirements for local areas to spend months preparing bids for various government levelling up funds, saying they risked holding back levelling up efforts.

Last week the authority placed transport schemes, worth around £270m, including road-widening projects, park and ride schemes and railway station developments, on hold due to soaring inflation.

Projects such as the Bradford to Shipley Corridor, South East Bradford Access Road, Halifax Station Gateway, Leeds Inland Port are due to be “paused” indefinitely.

Ms Brabin, who will be giving evidence later today to a select committee, examining funding for levelling up, said Ministers “talked the talk” but refused to let go of the purse-strings. She said: “This government trashed the economy and, as a result of record levels of inflation, we’re now having to pause important projects that will genuinely level up opportunities right across our region.

“Worse still, they’re pickpocketing our region during a cost-of-living crisis by cutting the money we received from the EUn by a third - despite promising we would receive the same amount.

“And after a decade of austerity when Town Hall budgets are left in tatters, they pass the buck on paying the tab for their bad decisions and insist on pushing council tax up – the sheer cheek of it.

“Ministers talk the talk on levelling up, but they refuse let go of the purse strings and put local leaders, who know their areas best, in control of their destiny.

“Instead of having to jump through hoops, bid into funds and repeatedly make the case to every single government department about why our region is ready for investment, we want a single conversation with the Treasury on a single settlement so we can join up decisions on skills, transport and jobs."

Levelling up, housing and communities committee chair and Sheffield MP Clive Betts said they were trying “to get to the facts” about the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, asking councils, universities and think-tanks as well as scrutiny officials in Westminster for views. Complicating factors included money from old EU schemes, which had been approved before the UK’s departure and was still being spent, being added in, although that had “virtually come to an end”.

He said: “How you extract that and decide how much money there is is extremely complicated.

"We have had an awful lot of concern expressed about the total money not being what the Government promised and the distribution being unfair as well.”