Yorkshire claims victory as Tour de France gets Treasury support

Yorkshire MPs were claiming a major victory yesterday after it was revealed the Government has set aside up to £10m to help stage the event’s ‘Grand Depart’ in the region next year.

On Monday night national sports quango UK Sport sensationally rejected organisers’ initial bid for public funding, raising concerns about their failure to set out how the event’s second stages in Cambridge and London would be staged, and about a lack of detail over how the money would actually be spent.

UK Sport officials were due to meet yesterday to confirm that decision, and are understood to have produced a highly critical assessment of the bid put forward by tourism body Welcome to Yorkshire.

But documents seen by the Yorkshire Post confirm the Treasury has told the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that £10m will anyway be set aside from its reserve funds to help pay for the event.

That decision followed face-to-face talks between the Deputy Prime Minister and Sheffield MP Nick Clegg, who is lobbying for the event to be fully funded by Government, and Chancellor George Osborne.

The £10m deal was confirmed by Culture Secretary Maria Miller last night at a meeting with a delegation of Yorkshire’s backbench Conservative MPs.

It will now be left for her officials to thrash out the details with Welcome to Yorkshire over the coming weeks.

The agency’s chief executive Gary Verity said: “Welcome to Yorkshire welcomes the news the UK Government will provide £10m. With this support, Welcome to Yorkshire can now deliver the grandest of Grand Départs.”