|
Member of Parliament for Bradford East@DavidWardMP on Twitter and Facebook |
 |
David Ward MP <>
David Ward reacts to changes in development funding
July 2, 2010 10:00 AM
Yorkshire Forward has just deferred a £1.3 million payment towards the City Centre regeneration
David Ward has cautiously welcomed the scrapping of Yorkshire Forward, the regional development quango, and it's replacement with local enterprise partnerships.
David said, "We must now see how the new partnerships will work and operate and ensure there is a real development to a local level. What the new local enterprise partnerships must not become is huge entities with several hundred staff. The idea should be to bring individual groups together in partnership but it should not become a new quango in its own right."
Private organisations and public-private partnerships will also be able to bid for funding from a £1 billion regional growth fund. While welcoming the fund, Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, the Liberal Democrat group leader on the Council, warned that care needed to be taken that it did not follow the mistakes of the past when it came to Government-led funding programmes.
She said: "We need to think very hard and not set off down the same track. I will be pressing both Government and the Council hard to see that any funds be invested in the manufacturing heart of Bradford, where solid people are doing some really good business in difficult times. We should be helping those businesses grow and take on more people."