§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will specify the comparative weighting of the criteria by which the 14 designated authorities to participate in the inner urban areas scheme were selected; and which other authorities come close to these on the basis of the same criteria.
§ Mr. ShoreAs I said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) on 13th June—[Vol. 951, c.468]—in selecting the districts for designation under the Inner Urban Areas Bill, I had to make a judgment about the severity of problems in individual districts. There are no clear-cut criteria by which such judgments can be made and so no comparative weighting can be given.
Certain districts received allocations from the £100 million for construction projects in inner cities announced by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1977 but were not included in my proposals for designation; clearly these were possible candidates for designation, though not necessarily the only ones. They are:
- Bristol
- Camden
- Coventry
- Derby
- Dudley
- Kensington and Chelsea
- Kirklees
- Portsmouth
- Southampton
- Tameside
- Trafford
- Walsall