Derbyshire Dales ‘wins’ Levelling up bid

To be more accurate Ashbourne won.

Whoever it was in the Conservative Government who devised the way Local Authorities bid for the money, they appear to have been influenced by the Hunger Games books. Why else would they decide that the best way to allocate scarce funds was to devise complex rules that requires towns and cities to compete with each other? Some will lose out, having spent significant amounts of time and resources putting their bid together. The rules also distort the nature of the bids with no small project being able to be considered in isolation.
The team that put together the Ashbourne bid did a great job but I am not sure that had the same sum of money been made available to the District Council without strings attached, that exactly the same projects would have been chosen by the elected members.

A long term project for Bakewell Road in Matlock had to be scaled back to allow the Ashbourne scheme the full attention of those commissioned to prepare the bid. Other areas with very real needs for infrastructure investment had to just watch since they did not have projects that were ready to be delivered in the short timescale demanded by the Tories.

Let us hope that a change of government puts an end to this 'game' and funds local authorities appropriately so they can deliver the services that are needed.