More than £1.5bn worth of capital funding pots are to be merged to help free councils from ‘needless bureaucracy’, according to deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
The Levelling Up Fund, Town Deals and Pathfinder Funds – worth more than £1.5bn in total – will become a single pot and the 150 reporting requirements that come with them will be reduced to less than 50, the deputy PM said.
In a statement published before her speech at the Local Government Association (LGA) conference, Rayner said: ‘For far too long, councils have been weighed down by needless bureaucracy that makes it harder to focus on what matters most – delivering on local people’s priorities.’
Speaking at the LGA conference, the deputy PM also repeated the Government's commitment to fund councils on the basis of need in a ‘fair and transparent way’.
On the issue of local government reorganisation, she said it was necessary to make local government ‘fit for the future’, moving it to a ‘simpler structure…with more accountability for residents’.
