Helen Barrett,
Regen.net,
27 July 2010
More than 100 projects that approached the North-West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) for funding in the current financial year will not receive the cash following £52 million of cuts to the agency's budget in 2010/11, the RDA announced yesterday.
The agency was told by the Treasury to make the savings as part of a package of £6.25 billion of cuts announced in May. The eight RDAs outside London were told to save £270 million in the current financial year, by ending "lower value spending". The cut amounts to nearly 20 per cent of the eight RDAs' combined budget of just over £1.4 billion in 2010/11.
Yesterday, the NWDA set out how it would make its £52 million share of the cuts in the current financial year.
It said that all non-contractually committed projects will not now be able to secure funding from the agency. Such projects include the Talbot Gateway scheme in Blackpool and improvement projects to the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and Chester Zoo.
The RDA added that it will make no new financial commitments in 2011/12.
A spokeswoman said the agency was also in negotiations with partners on trimming costs from existing projects on a case-by-case basis. Discretionary spending in areas such as marketing and recruitment has also been stopped, and a voluntary redundancy scheme introduced.
The RDA’s funding for more than 30 partner organisations will also end in March 2011, it said.
Steve Broomhead, chief executive of the NWDA, said: "We now need to re-examine all existing projects and programmes to identify further savings.
"We are involved in very careful and sensitive discussions with our partners about this. We will use all available flexibility to try to meet these challenging reductions, but the reality is that this is a substantial reduction to our in-year budget and there is bound to be an economic impact on the partners, businesses and communities with whom we work."
