Secrecy row over £47m jobs grants

As Ministers announced the 50 projects – including seven in this region revealed in yesterday’s Yorkshire Post – which will share £450m to create or save 100,000 jobs, they have been challenged to reveal how decisions were made.

Some of the 49 Yorkshire projects whose bids have been rejected have not even been identified because the Government insists it cannot do so due to commercial confidentiality, prompting Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East and chairman of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, to demand transparency.

“It’s all been done in secrecy,” he said. “We don’t even know what criteria they used. They’ve got to be very clear what the criteria are, and say what the bids are.”

The Government has kicked off bidding for a second round of grants from the Fund, a key part of the plan to revive economies outside London and the South East. The first round saw most funding directed to the north of England.

But while Ministers focused on the region’s seven successful bids given £47m to create or save 10,000 jobs – including a link road in Doncaster, a new Haribo plant in Normanton, housing projects in Hull and Kirklees and a wind turbine research centre in Huddersfield – there was disappointment from those who missed out.

Among projects known to have been rejected are a series of schemes in West Yorkshire backed by the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, including providing internships for 500 graduates in small and medium sized firms.

Plans for an international centre to develop biorenewable feedstocks, a bus and rail interchange in Castleford, redevelopment of the Prince of Wales colliery on the edge of Pontefract, transformation of the centre of Barnsley and a new commercial centre for Bradford were also rejected.

Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves criticised the lack of funding for Leeds. “I’m glad other projects in West Yorkshire have gone ahead, but nobody seriously thinks Wakefield, Pontefract and Huddersfield are going to be the drivers of economic recovery,” she said. “Leeds is the capital city of West Yorkshire and is going to be the driver of the economic recovery.”

David Blunkett, MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, said: “West Yorkshire seems to have done amazingly well out of a significantly smaller pot. But, it’s a massive disappointment for Sheffield and South Yorkshire.”

And Colin Challen, ex-Morley and Rothwell MP and now trying to become a councillor in Scarborough, bemoaned the lack of any funding for North Yorkshire.

But Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “The Regional Growth Fund is a competitive fund and we wanted to see proposals that created jobs in the private sector, in areas of deprivation and that is at risk of suffering from public sector cuts. I’m confident that the successful bids we have chosen will deliver on this.”

The region’s biggest winner, Doncaster Council, which is to get £18m for a link road from the M18 to Robin Hood Airport, said it hoped planning issues would be resolved by the end of the year so work can begin in the middle of 2012. The road will allow 5,000 homes to be built and businesses at the airport to expand.

Another winner, Huddersfield-based David Brown, said it will receive about £2m to help develop a “world-class” research and development centre into wind turbine gearboxes. It will develop technology for wind farms around the world.