Additional £31.6million to support City Region projects
Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has negotiated an expansion of the Local Growth Deal with Government which will bring further investment to the City Region. This complements the first Local Growth Deal announced last year where the LEP was awarded £232 million for key projects.
This second round of funding sees business at the heart of the Growth Deal with Government allocating an additional £15.6 million for a two year extension of the Business Growth Grant programme to support local businesses and deliver jobs across the City Region.
Welcoming the announcement Robert Hough Chair of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) said: “I am delighted by the news from Government of a further £31.6 million expansion of our Local Growth Deal. This builds on and complements the first Growth Deal that we agreed in 2014 and places business growth at the heart of our strengthening economy.
“We have now, in total, been allocated over £250 million to City Region schemes from our Local Growth Deals alone.”
Robert added: “This new round of funding is especially good news for business, with an additional £15.6 million secured for the extension of our Business Growth Grant. It is an endorsement from Government of the success of the Business Growth Grant in delivering against the City Region’s strategic priorities of job creation and business growth. Securing access to finance is often cited as a barrier to businesses developing and creating new jobs; the extension to the Business Growth Grant will go some way towards helping with this issue.
“The delivery of economic growth in the City Region is the key purpose of the LEP and these grants have been a key element of our work, a tool to unlock private investment through support for both local projects and attracting inward investment.
“To date, the grant has helped over 100 businesses create more than 250 jobs in the City Region. Grants totalling over £14 million are leveraging a further £92 million from private sector investment, funding projects as diverse as expanded production facilities, software upgrades and the purchase of new machinery.”
Liverpool City Region will also receive £15.6 million for the establishment of a City Region Capital Investment Fund that will support strategic projects in the area based on business case assessments.
£0.4million has also been allocated for a Low Carbon Delivery Unit which will bring forward and develop more Low Carbon schemes across the City Region.