The High Street Innovation Fund set up to help revive the fortunes of local shops, has come under fire for allocating cash unfairly and leaving hundreds of high streets without hope.
The £10m fund was set up in the wake of the Mary Portas review on the future of the high street and has awarded 100 local authorities £100,000 each to help reduce the impact of closed shops.
Analysis of the scheme by the Local Data Company has shown that the area with the fewest number of empty shops Rickmansworth in Three Rivers DC has just two empty shops but receives the same amount of money as Nottingham, which has 428 empty shops on its high streets.
Matthew Hopkinson, director at the Local Data Company said: 'There is a wide variance in town centre health within these local authorities' core towns. Whilst the Government has published no allocation criteria, it clearly goes beyond assisting the weaker town centres through inclusion of below average vacancy towns.
'It would suggest that the grant is also targeted towards the important role of supporting existing established businesses on high streets to ensure they continue to remain as occupiers.
'It does leave hundreds of town centres up and down the country with little or no hope of how they can invest in turning around or indeed just managing the further decline on their high streets.'
Other key findings show that the range of grant support varies from £14,285 for each empty shop in Reigate (Reigate and Banstead DC) to just £233.64 in Nottingham City Council area.
It also shows that Newcastle upon Tyne City Council has had the greatest annual increase in empty high street shops at 6.2% while Brixton in Lambeth LBC has showing the most improvement with an 11.2% reduction over the past year.
