§ Mr. CorbettTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what consideration he has given to enabling winners of city challenge to spend their allocated total budget over five years according to need and the progress of schemes rather than in five equal annual amounts.
§ Mr. BaldryCity challenge expenditure is subject to the annuality rules applied to all funds voted by Parliament under the Appropriation Act.
The Department makes every effort to manage city challenge resources flexibly to accommodate the difficulties that may be faced by partnerships in matching progress on the ground exactly to their annual £7.5 million funding allocations. Reserve programmes are approved annually in order to accommodate slippage. Underspends which emerge in the year are offset wherever possible by expediting programmes in other city challenge areas. We are considering whether further flexibility is possible.