Political leaders in Dundee have been locked in a spat over access to funds offered by the UK Government.
The city’s SNP council leader, John Alexander, was accused of turning up his nose at the Levelling Up scheme because the cash comes from Westminster.
But freshly uncovered emails reveal Mr Alexander was on the case as early as March 2021, urging officers to put together a bid.
That is despite the scheme’s transport element arguably encroaching on an area of policy devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
Why didn’t Dundee submit a bid?
Dundee City Council is entitled to bid for two projects – one for each of its MPs – and a further transport bid.
Critics, such as North East MSP Maurice Golden, say the council should have had applications ready to go before the first round of bidding closed last year.
Dundee will have further opportunities to submit bids but they argue the failure to apply early could see vitally important projects delayed and council officers miss out on feedback for future applications.
Mr Alexander says the council did not prepare a bid in June 2021 – despite being considered a high priority case – “as it takes time to pull firm proposals of that scale together”.
Email correspondence reveals the authority believed internally it could get the transport proposal ready before the deadline but ultimately ran out of time.
Who is to blame?
Whether the blame for that should lie with council officers for failing to get their affairs in order or Michael Gove’s Levelling Up department for setting unrealistic timescales is ultimately a matter of perspective.
No fewer than eight councils in Scotland submitted successful bids – and at least a third of all 32 local authorities are known to have applied in the first round.
But the Levelling Up scheme is a poorly designed funding mechanism that puts local authorities in a difficult position.
Council bosses and politicians have been working behind the scenes to convince the government to look again at the application rules.
The tight timescales for bids to be made and projects to get underway means any successful application would need to be deliverable within a very narrow timeframe.
The first set of funding awards was scheduled for Autumn 2021 but projects had to be “shovel ready” by March 31. For large scale projects, that is a big ask.
Further issues for councils
Officials also believe that only bids supported by local MPs are likely to be approved but in local authority areas like Dundee that creates further issues.
MPs are allowed to support one project each so which authority should Stewart Hosie – whose constituency covers councils in both Dundee and Angus – give his backing to?
Capacity funding of £125,000 has also been made available to support bids but can only be used to develop later submissions.
These are problems being felt across the country.
The kind of major projects being discussed for the Levelling Up fund in Dundee could be game changers for the city.
They are far too important to be the subject of political football or funding criteria set to such arbitrary deadlines.
