This fund aims to support the most needy people and communities across the UK with pilot programmes and new approaches and will invest in skills, community and place, local businesses and help people find jobs. The £220 million Community Renewal Fund (CRF) was announced in the March 2021 budget. The CRF is a short-term fund whose express intention is to enable and support new innovative ideas and to pilot programmes and approaches to support local economic development that can influence the UK`s longer-term Shared Prosperity Fund (the government`s replacement funding for the European Structural and Investment Funds). In particular, the EU`s Structural and Investment Funds were notoriously very compliant, resulting in significant delays during the application process and subjecting projects to multiple audits. The application process for the Community Renewal Fund was relatively quick and, although announcements were initially delayed, they were announced weeks later. Therefore, the Community Renewal Fund has probably improved the EU model in this regard. Q13. You said that the funds must now be spent by June 30, 2022. How do you define spending and what happens if spending goes beyond June 30, 2022? Six projects were funded in London. Given the frivolous approach to this issue in the application form, it is perhaps not surprising that public bodies receiving funding are required to ensure that an « independent assessment of the compatibility of each project with the grant control rules » has been carried out.
The UKCRF is providing additional funding to help local areas prepare for the introduction of the UKSPF. The UKSPF will be worth more than £2.6 billion over the next 3 years. The UKSPF will increase to £1.5 billion per year by 2024-2025. The government will release more details on the UK`s Shared Prosperity Fund this fiscal year. While UKCRF will help influence the design of the UKSPF by supporting people and communities and creating opportunities to test new approaches and innovative ideas at local level, funding varies in terms of design, eligibility and duration. Winners are located throughout the UK. A total of 477 « locally managed projects » will benefit from the fund, with the bulk of funding going to projects in England (£125.6 million), followed by Wales (£46.9 million), Scotland (£18.4 million) and Northern Ireland (£12.4 million). Is the Community Renewal Fund achieving its goal of helping the UK smoothly move away from EU funds after Brexit? At first glance, it is difficult to make this point. The value of the Community Renewal Fund is only £220 million, much less than the allocation under the EU Structural and Investment Funds (although there is the government`s argument that other funds should be seen as a contribution to making up for this loss of funding). The distribution of winners of the Community Renewal Fund also suggests that regions for which large allocations were previously granted under the EU regime performed poorly in the selection process. .