Councils spent £120,000 on hiring consultants to help with unsuccessful Northamptonshire levelling up cash bids

No council officers in Northamptonshire worked full-time on preparing unsuccessful multi-million pound Government funding bids.

Both North and West Northamptonshire Councils applied for cash from the Levelling Up Fund round 2 and said they were “disappointed” to receive nothing last month.

North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) had hoped to receive £30.8m for six projects. West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) wanted £20m of government funding for regeneration in Weston Favell and another £8.6m for a new animal welfare unit at Moulton College, amongst other plans.

The authorities said none of its officers spent all of their working time on the bids, although both hired a consultant each to supplement their work. WNC said it spent £65,366 getting advice from Avison Young UK Ltd. It said two council officers worked on its submissions. A project officer worked for about 25 per cent of their time preparing the bids and a project manager for about 15 per cent of their time.

After it was unsuccessful, WNC said it was going to take time to “consider how this decision affects the proposals” and “will review future funding streams”.

NNC spent £61,025 employing another consultant to help it, Deyton Bell. It said five officers spent time “alongside other activities” working on its Levelling Up projects. Two spent time working on the plan for a Corby station/town centre link and another two worked on the Wellingborough/Rushden Greenway project. One worked on the plan for Chester House Estate.

Cllr David Brackenbury (Con), NNC’s executive member for growth and regeneration, told a council meeting last month: “We were very disappointed that Northamptonshire – not just north Northamptonshire – did not receive any funding in this round. It’s true to say that there were 500 bids put in and the Government granted over 100 of these – so there were a lot of disappointed faces up and down the country.

“I am reassured that we will get feedback from the relevant Government department on how our bid was structured and any lessons that might be learned from that but nevertheless our disappointment is real and remains.”

All of the information was obtained from the councils through Freedom of Information requests.