North Yorkshire Council

Thirsk and Malton Constituency Committee

1^st December 2023

Levelling Up Fund Round 2 and 3 update

1.0

1.1

Purpose of the Report

To provide an update of North Yorkshire Council (NYC) Levelling Up Fund round two submissions and subsequent round three announcement consisting of two schemes within the Thirsk and Malton constituency area.

2.0 Levelling Up Fund Round Two and Round Three

2.1 On 23 March 2022 the Levelling Up Fund (LUF) round two prospectus was announced. This was an overall £4.8bn fund, with £1.7bn awarded in round one and £3.1bn remaining for round two submissions and subsequently round three. The application window opened on 31 March 2022 and closed on 02 August 2022. The winning bids from this process were announced in January 2023 and most but not all funding was allocated.

2.2 After the January announcement NYC were advised of the reasons why the Thirsk and Malton bids were unsuccessful and given advice by Government to help with future bids.

North Yorkshire’s bids, the overall feedback was given with suggestions made to strengthen the strategic, economic and deliverability aspects of the bid. Similar to NYC, feedback on the strategic fit suggested greater engagement with local people and detail on how the scheme aligned with national guidance would have strengthened the bid. The economic case would have benefited from greater clarity and evidence of the Gross Value Added (GVA) benefits such as air-quality and Land Value Uplift (LVU) because they increase BCR but cannot be assessed because the evidence is not provided.

The feedback suggested it was difficult to understand the problems and how they would be addressed by the proposed intervention. On Deliverability there would have been greater confidence in the project if the detail on costs, the delivery plan and monitoring and evaluation had been further broken down. The project team agreed some of the feedback was fair and are exploring this further with WSP (who supported the development of their bid) but they disagree with some of the feedback where it is suggested evidence is not provided but can be found within the application.

There has been no opportunity to review the bids and re-apply.

2.3 On 20 November 2023 the Government announced the successful bids for Levelling Up Fund Round 3 and rather than a re-bidding process have decided to revisit the Round 2 bids and allocate funding to the strongest remaining bids. On this basis neither the Malton or Thirsk (part of a wider North Yorkshire Council bid including Seamer and Scarborough) were successful.

2.4 With the LUF Bids being unsuccessful NYC will look for other opportunities to take forward applications for funding. These include:

· All the LUF bids will be on the major schemes pipeline long list which will then be sifted to form the pipeline of projects to be delivered via the Mayoral Combined Authority. The funding that will most likely be used for this type of project is the Local Integrated Transport Settlement (LITS) and Y&NY are expecting to receive around £300m over 7 years from 2025.

· Thirsk – Network Rail and Transpennine Trains with NYC support applied for Access for All funding for Thirsk Station, the scheme is well advanced, and all parties are hopeful of an announcement in Autumn/Winter 2023. The funding when announced would be for the completion between April 2024 and March 2029 to fit with Network Rails five-year Control Periods.

· Malton – could also be linked to the future NYC Growth Strategy and active travel initiatives.

Network Rail and the train operator see Malton Station as a pinch point with its single-track platform. Although the £11.9bn Government investment in the Transpennine Route Upgrade does not include Malton or the Scarborough line, services are still likely to use the upgraded network in the future and reliability will be key with the Scarborough – York service likely to use the new network. There may be future rail investment opportunities that the Malton LUF bid work can feed into.

2.5 Other opportunities for funding may come forward and the work to date on the LUF bids puts both Thirsk and Malton in a good place.

3.0 Equalities

3.1 There are no immediate equalities issues arising from this report as this is to update members on bids for funding.

4.0 Finance

4.1 This paper forms the basis of an update, and as such there are no financial implications arising directly from the report. Full financial implications of the NYCC Levelling Up bid are set out in the report to North Yorkshire County Council Executive of 5 July 2022 and the financial implications of the RDC bid are set out in the report to the Ryedale District Council Policy and Resources Committee of 16 June 2022 and detailed within the recorded meeting minutes.

5.0 Legal

5.1 There are no immediate legal issues arising from this report as it is providing an update.

6.0 Climate Change

6.1 There no immediate Climate Change issues arising from this report.

7.0 Recommendation

7.1 It is recommended that members note the contents of this report.

BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS:

North Yorkshire County Council Executive of 5 July 2022 https://edemocracy.northyorks.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=1147&MId=6413&Ver=4

Ryedale District Council Policy and Resources Committee of 16 June 2022 https://democracy.ryedale.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=119&MId=3614&Ver=4

Graham North

Highways and Transportation

Business and Environmental Services

22 November 2023

Note: Members are invited to contact the author in advance of the meeting with any detailed queries or questions.