Levelling Up: Failed £20m bid did not incur 'significant additional costs' for Scarborough Council

Members of Scarborough Council’s Audit Committee have been told that the authority’s failed Levelling Up Fund bid “did not incur significant additional costs” due to a £125,000 grant to help with the application.

However, officers have said that failure to secure the funding constitutes the “top risk” currently faced by the authority.

Scarborough Council unsuccessfully bid for £20m from the second round of the Government’s Levelling Up Fund.

The money was set to advance the station “gateway” redevelopment of two town centre buildings – Pavilion House and the former Comet building – as a centre for public sector services and FabLab+ offices.

Scarborough Council has said that in addition to Towns Fund money – which awarded £37.3m to Scarborough and Whitby in March 2021 – Levelling Up Funding was necessary for the plans “to be delivered to their full potential”.

The audit committee asked council officers why the bid did not result in a grant despite the Government’s classification of Scarborough as a “Priority 1” area of deprivation.

Councillors also questioned whether the authority was left at a financial loss as a result of money spent on drafting and submitting the application.

At the meeting of the committee on Thursday January 26, chair, Alex Bailey said: “These applications aren’t free and making these bids costs money.

“Have we made a loss, in effect?”

Responding to the question, a council officer said: “The Government did give ‘Priority 1’ areas funding, so we got £125,000 as a council to develop a bid.

“For our area, you will know that the station ‘gateway’ was the Levelling Up Fund bid that we submitted. So a lot of that business case work and development was actually picked up through the Towns Fund scheme.

“As a council, we did not incur significant additional costs in developing that Levelling Up Fund bid.”

However, when the The Scarborough News submitted a Freedom of Information request to Scarborough Council in June 2022, requesting details on how much it paid Amion Consulting Ltd to assist with its bid for the £20m, the authority declined to provide the information.

At the time, Scarborough Council said it could not reveal the information as it was “commercially sensitive and therefore exempt from disclosure”.

In November 2021 it was revealed that the authority spent more than £1m on developing a bid for funding from the Towns Fund scheme, which will create 10 projects across the borough.

On the issue of feedback regarding the failed bid, raised by Cllr Heather Phillips, officers indicated that they would seek to provide further details at the committee’s next meeting.