Today I can confirm a major package of support for communities to take control of their future. This includes £301 million to reimagine and revive struggling high streets through our high street innovation partnerships, £18 million to improve children’s playgrounds in deprived areas, a major expansion of the Pride in Place programme, and pilots to drive place-based public service reform. Through these measures, the Government are boosting the sense of pride that people feel in their area and making sure that they see change for the better.
In February, the Prime Minister announced that a further 40 places will join the Pride in Place programme. That means that 284 communities will benefit from this transformational fund, with each receiving up to £20 million over the next decade to invest in the things that matter to local people. Today I am confirming the 40 places selected.
We have also approved plans for the first phase of Pride in Place places, setting out what the communities included in the programme will be spending the money on and how they plan to transform their areas.
In Ramsgate, the community has decided to invest £500,000 to save the town’s last youth centre from closure, securing the building’s future and ensuring that vital services for young people can continue. In Bilston, Wolverhampton, the local neighbourhood board has chosen to bring back the Bilston carnival for the first time since 2008, reviving a well-loved tradition and giving a new generation something to celebrate together.
Backed by £301 million of funding, our high streets innovation partnerships will help struggling high streets to shift to a new model: one that is based on an exciting new future, not a return to an imagined past. In a select number of areas, local authorities will be encouraged to work alongside communities and businesses to develop transformative plans such as to bring public services, green spaces and homes into the centres of these towns, working with anchor institutions and businesses to secure co-investment.
The partnerships will also deliver a summer of activity on high streets this year, with innovative measures to boost footfall in a season of major cultural and sporting events, such as the world cup. Later this year we will also publish a high streets strategy to support all high streets nationally and equip local authorities with the tools they need to drive long-term regeneration.
In too many neighbourhoods, local playgrounds are sliding into disrepair or have disappeared entirely. Our investment in playgrounds will reverse this decline, building and restoring play equipment in the places with the highest levels of child poverty and the lowest quality of playgrounds. The £18 million investment that we are confirming today will ensure that children in some of the most deprived communities have the quality of space they need to play. The funding is to be spent by 66 local authorities on up to 200 new or refurbished playgrounds and has been allocated across England, from Tyneside to Torquay.
We are using place-based budgets to pool public service budgets in local areas to enable services to be delivered better, joined up around the people who need them most, by breaking down silos, unlocking more funding for prevention and improving better outcomes for taxpayers. These will ensure that users are helped based on their need.
We have launched five projects with mayoral strategic authorities initially, focusing on special educational needs and disabilities across the Liverpool city region; young people at risk of offending in Gateshead and South Tyneside; adolescent mental health across four local authorities in the Black Country—Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall—adults facing multiple disadvantage in Doncaster; and preventing youth unemployment across West Yorkshire.
Taken together, this package demonstrates a genuine shift in power and investment into our communities. We are not starting at square one. In every community, thousands of community leaders, volunteers and grassroots organisations are already working hard to make their areas a better place to live. This package provides the investment they need to deliver the change that people want to see.
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