§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Industry (1) what is the average time taken from lodging of applications to payment of regional development grant in (a) Grimsby, (b) the North-East and (c) Merseyside in the most recent period as compared with similar figures for 1978;
(2) if he will increase the number of staff processing regional development grant applications for the Grimsby area, in view of the costs of long delays for industry;
27W(3) whether he is satisfied with the time taken to process development grant applications for Grimsby; and if he has any proposals for improvement.
§ Mr. David MitchellInformation about the time taken to deal with applications for regional development grant for particular localities is not maintained, but the average times taken by the Billing-ham and Bootle regional development grants offices during the six months ending in December 1978 and December 1979 respectively were:
1978 Weeks 1979 Billingham (which deals with applications from Grimsby and the North-East) 17.2 23.3 Bootle (which deals with applications from Merseyside) 12.6 15.9 Applications made after 12 June 1979 are subject to the four months' deferment in payment of approved claims announced in the Budget speech on 12 June 1979 and this deferment is not taken into account in the average time to process applications.
There are no proposals to increase the number of staff at the Billingham office. But the efforts that are being made to reduce the time taken to deal with applications are meeting with success. The position is improving and the average time to deal with applications is now 19.3 weeks at Billingham and 12.4 weeks at Bootle compared with the average time of 13 weeks for all four regional development grants offices since the commencement of the RDG scheme. Continued improvement is expected.