§ Mr. Hilary BennTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will list the programmes funded directly by his Department, relating to social exclusion, regeneration, community development, employment or education, currently operating in(a) the City of Leeds and (b) the Leeds Central parliamentary constituency, listing for each programme the amount of such funding for each of the last three years and the amount planned to be spent in each of the next three financial years. [92910]
§ Mr. WillsThe information requested is not held by my Department centrally. The Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber (GOYH) has provided the following details. Information at a constituency level is not available.
Funding for core services of the Business Link in Leeds and the Local Competitiveness Challenge amounted to:
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Year £ 1997–98 947,810 1998–99 985,627 1999–2000 1,200,722 National budgets for 2000–01 will not be known until late 1999 and therefore negotiation for Business Link budgets will not begin before January-March 2000.
Pump priming funding of £97,500 has been awarded to Business Link Leeds under the Information Society Initiative (ISI) programme for Business Local Support Centres, designed to encourage and support SMEs in the use of IT. BL Leeds has had a number of successful ERDF bids for projects to increase provision, cohesion and quality of service to the micro and small business and start up client groups, £445,575 has been awarded in the last three years.
SMART awards totalling £448,337 were given to Leeds based companies between 1997 and the present and it is projected that at least the same amount will be awarded for 1999–02.
There are 17 "IT for All" Centres in Leeds. IT for All is a DTI funded national programme designed to promote the wider use of IT among the general public.
There is no direct funding by DTI to individual centres.