§ Mrs. RocheTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment which TECs included funding for business start-up(a) grants and (b) training in their last single regeneration budget bid; and which of these bids were successful. [9195]
§ Sir Paul BeresfordInformation in the form requested is not available. The kind of support provided for business start-up activity in SRB challenge fund bids is determined by local partnerships to reflect the needs of their localities. Challenge fund grant is made available by the Government to help meet the costs of these locally determined initiatives.
In rounds 1 and 2 of the challenge fund, a total of 25 training and enterprise councils took the lead in 39 successful bids that included funding for business start-up. Over their lifetime, these schemes are expected to provide 36,000 new business starts and to receive £140 million in challenge fund support. The TECs concerned are:
- Merseyside
- Greater Nottingham
- Hereford and Worcester
- South London
- London East
- Central London
- City and Inner London
- North West London
- North London
- West London
- AZTEC
- Gloucestershire
- Cheshire, Ellesmere Port and Wirral
- St Helens
- South and East Cheshire
- Greater Peterborogh
- Herts
- Norfolk and Waveney
- Shropshire
- Lancashire Area West and East Lancashire
- Teesside
602 - Tyneside
- Northumberland
- Heart of England
- North Yorkshire.
A further 199 challenge fund schemes are expected to produce an additional 44,000 business start-ups over their lifetime. Although not led by TECs, most of these schemes involve TECs as members of partnerships.