The 'EU money' we have lost (again)

I suppose I ought to cover these signs of growing nagging in the Remainer camp. There have been a few of them lately.

This one is fairly easy to deal with, beginning with the old myth that the EU gave us money.It also begins with a big scarey headline although the story gets much more complicated for anyone with the stamina to read on:

UK ministers pledged to match EU funds after Brexit. How’s that going?

Delays to new programmes have affected support for vulnerable people, ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’

In recent years, two flagship EU programmes were a lifeline for communities across the UK. The European regional development fund (ERDF) and the European social fund (ESF) poured €10.8bn (£9.26bn) into roads, factories and social inclusion projects including further education colleges and into places such as Wales, north-east England, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly – paying for everything from carpentry workshops for blind people to an upgrade of Hayle harbour in Cornwall to facilitate an offshore windfarm.

The ERDF sank capital into everything from new roads to university facilities, business hubs and sports centres in economically deprived regions, while the ESF skills training, back to work schemes and other projects helped those “furthest” from jobs.

...ministers pledged to match EU funding for the duration of the parliament, setting up the UK shared prosperity fund (UKSPF) last December promising that the government, rather than Brussels, would choose where money was spent – part of the Brexit dividend.

But it hasn’t turned out like that; in Wales, people speak of a cliff edge in funding that has caused “despair” and “disappointment” [Wales and Scotland seem to be the main complainers -- funny that]

Hundreds of voluntary organisations have had to shut up shop or end support programmes for the most vulnerable in society because of government delays in replacing EU funding, it has emerged.

Getting to details, though:

the EU-funded £15m sports centre is still an eye-catching monolith in the former steel town of Ebbw Vale, where 62%, the highest percentage in Wales, voted to leave.[but] They wanted jobs, not sports centres, the town lamented back in 2016. 

The government pledged to keep splashing the cash to replace the EU programmes until 2025 and in December announced £2.6m had been earmarked for its long-awaited replacement scheme, the UKSPF, which would “turbo charge levelling-up” and give “local leaders greater say in how the money is spent”.

But the announcement, welcome as it finally was, was too late for “hundreds of organisations”.... the problem that we have with the UK shared prosperity fund is that all that experience is being lost.”[because] the eight-month delay is crippling projects 

And, right at the end of a fairly long article:

The UK received the equivalent of £1.35bn a year under the old system. ['received back' that should be,of course] December’s announcement accounts for just under £870m on average a year, but the government has pledged to ramp up the UKSPF funding to £1.5bn by 2024-25....The UKSPF was the only fund that explicitly replaces EU funding, but Cornwall, for instance, reckons it is getting the equivalent of EU funding when two other government funds are included....

Analysis of the UKSPF allocations by local authority and nation shows there is money for everywhere, not just the deprived areas.

“Every place in the UK has been allocated a share of the UKSPF, with even the smallest places receiving at least £1m. This recognises that even the most affluent parts of the UK contain pockets of deprivation and need support,” the government said in its prospectus....It added that under the spending plans, “England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all receiving at least as much as they did before”, while “local councils and local partners will have the opportunity to adapt each plan to reflect new economic priorities over the period to 2025”....The big advantage of the post-Brexit scheme, said Gardner, is that it is the council, not a Brussels deprivation metric, that determines where the money goes.