§ Mr. HealeyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what arrangements he proposes for funding the successor to the Single Regeneration Budget in 2001–02. [153475]
§ Ms ArmstrongThe Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) will continue to be able to allocate funds from the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) expenditure line in 2001–02. Schemes approved up to the end of that year will continue to receive funding for the agreed period of the scheme, which may be up to seven years.
In SR 2000, RDAs were given considerable additional funding and flexibilities to deliver their regional strategies, whose primary purpose is to enhance the region's competitiveness through sustainable economic development, regeneration and business growth. A key flexibility is the introduction of a single budget from April 2002, which will subsume all current RDA funding streams. There will not, therefore, be a national SRB bidding round for new schemes in 2001–02. We have invited those RDAs with sufficient resources, after commitments from earlier SRB rounds are taken into account, to put forward proposals for using funds from the SRB line in their corporate plans for 2001–02. Each RDA will be able to decide on its own approach, which will contribute to the development of the RDAs' regional strategies. The RDAs will be expected to meet their commitments to schemes from SRB Rounds 1 to 6 from their single budget.