September Programme bulletin issued by HM Government

Feature Article

Announcement on future funding for ESI Funds
The Chancellor made a significant announcement on 13 August about the future funding of schemes currently funded by the EU. Assurance was given that all structural and investment fund projects signed or with funding agreements in place before the Government’s Autumn Statement will be fully funded, even when these projects continue after the UK has left the EU.

The Government will also work with partners to put in place arrangements for considering those ESI Fund projects that might be signed after the Autumn Statement, but while we still remain a member of the EU. Further details will be provided ahead of the Autumn Statement which has been set for 23 November. These arrangements will ensure that spending commitments remain consistent with value for money and our own domestic policies.

It will clearly be a busy period for us all, both ahead of the Autumn Statement and in the period following it. We will work hard to ensure that partners are kept sighted on and engaged with our work and future plans as matters develop over the coming weeks. We are currently discussing with partners (until 7 October) in our local ESI Funds sub-committees potential activities that might be contracted after the Autumn Statement.

Thank you for your patience in recent months – we look forward to working with you to deliver the detail outlined in the Chancellor’s statement.

Latest Programme News

ERDF Calls/Projects Update

• We have legally committed £355 million of ERDF and we have a further £1.127 billion of applications currently under consideration.
• Projects are now delivering with ERDF spend being claimed and paid.
• Most of the calls published in April have closed but some are still open on the funding finder on the GOV.UK website.

ESF Calls/Projects Update

• There are currently no open ESF calls.
• The final live calls deadline was 31 July – Access to Employment: project call in Greater Birmingham & Solihull LEP area Investment Priority 1.1 with a value of £3 million.

There are 43 ESF funding agreements that we anticipate will be signed before the Autumn Statement with an approximate value of £73 million.

The most recent quarter (to mid July 2016) shows that

• Of 77 Direct Bid full applications, to a value of just under £215 million, 65 have received Funding Agreements worth £194.5 million. The remaining applications are being processed.
• 145 full Memorandums of Understanding amounting to £1.15 billion are now in place with Co-Financing Organisations.

EAFRD Calls/Projects Update

• During 2015, calls totalling £24.5 million were issued in 27 of the 37 LEP areas with Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) funding.
• The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has approved and contracted 11 projects in five LEP areas from the March 2015 calls totalling over £1.5 million.
• Full applications from the July, August and September calls, amounting to nearly £18m, are now being assessed.

To access the funding finder tool, where all calls can be searched/filtered by name, status (open / closed), type (priority area), location and funding source, click here

Guidance update
The following documents have recently been published or updated on the ESI Fund pages of the GOV.UK website.

• ESF Scoring Framework
• Outline Application Form and Guidance
• ESIF Management and Control Requirements
• Full Application Form and Guidance
• Guidance on ESF and Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) participant contact details
• ESIF Branding and Publicity Requirements
• Guidance for Member States on the selection of bodies implementing financial instruments.

Compliance with EU regulatory requirements
We have been asked about state aid. Whilst we remain in the EU, beneficiaries of EU funding must continue to comply with all the existing rules which apply to those schemes.  So, the EU state aid regime continues to be very much in place and must be complied with.

This applies to all EU regulations for the 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 programmes.

Project Change Requests
Applicants and Grant Recipients will be aware of the current operating conditions for ESI Funds following the outcome of the referendum.

The Managing Authorities are, and will be, carefully monitoring performance and expenditure, particularly in respect of longer term financial commitments.
Applicants and Grant Recipients are asked to note that all project change requests will be considered on a case by case basis and re-profile of expenditure only granted in exceptional circumstances.

The presumption should be that contracted financial and output profiles should be met.

Growth Programme Board
The Board met on Thursday 15 September. In addition to the regular reports of progress on each of the ESIF programmes, members received the final iteration of the Partnership Working Review report. The preliminary draft had been circulated in June and members provided editorial suggestions and feedback to the Review Team. The report summarises the conclusions and sets out the steps for putting recommendations into place. Board members commended the Review Team for its work, which they believe has moved engagement and relationships between central government, partners and stakeholders to a better position. The challenge is to maintain momentum and ensure that the temptation for silo working is overcome. The Board asked for a progress note on implementing the recommendations, in March 2017.

The Board’s membership and terms of reference are almost due for their first review. A proposal for taking that piece of work forward will be presented at the meeting on 13 December.

Focus on Projects

ERDF: Porton Science Park is a new 3870sqm health and life sciences incubation and innovation centre at Porton Down, Wiltshire is being supported by £3 million of ERDF. The £6.86 million project will provide flexible lab space and office facilities for SMEs, along with new and growing enterprises in Wiltshire. It’s being led by Wiltshire Council and will create over 200 full time equivalent jobs locally, as well as bring opportunities for advanced skills training in the bioscience sector

The Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) is providing just under £130,000 towards the £325,000 costs of an automated flower grading and bunching line in Lincolnshire.

The project will enable the company to meet the increasing customer demand for high value cut and bunched flowers from the multiple household name retailers. The investment will include the purchase of a state of the art flower bunching and packing line, which will increase the output of the existing processing system by 50%. This investment will enable the cost of production per bunch to be lowered, therefore enabling the company to become more competitive in the market place. It will also enable more home grown product to be supplied to the UK retailers rather than imported flowers.

The investment will take place alongside an investment in additional glasshouse growing capacity, so that the business is able to deliver significant overall growth (forecast at 20% year on year) and create an estimated 10 full time jobs as well as securing the existing 80 jobs at the company.

ESF: Impact is a Black Country programme that addresses the barriers faced by unemployed individuals aged 15-29 years, supporting them to secure positive outcomes including employment, apprenticeships, training and further education. The programme has an individualised approach and alternative delivery structures provide flexible personalised learning and support that address the range of different personal and skills needs of young adults. Access to trusted advice and support, working alongside partners including housing, health, transport bodies and employers to ensure individuals have the best possible opportunity to overcome the range of barriers they face, and to ensure they effectively participate, achieve a positive outcome and remain engaged.

The project expects to engage with over 16,000 participants through its lifetime with the aim of gaining positive outcomes (unemployed participants who receive an offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship or traineeship upon leaving) for over 4,000 local unemployed residents; including 1,200 long term unemployed and similar positive results for 1,300 local inactive residents of the Black Country. Total project costs of £51m are split equally between ESF, Youth Employment Initiative and match funding.

Festival of Learning ESF award winners
In April’s Programme Bulletin we provided information about planned ESF awards at this year’s Festival of Learning – a national celebration of lifelong learning organised by the Learning and Work Institute. The Festival of Learning is part-funded by ESF Technical Assistance to help raise awareness of ESF activities. The National Award Ceremony took place in Birmingham on 13 September where Dr Catherine Blair, Head of the European Social Fund gave a short speech and presented certificates to this year’s two ESF award winners.

The ESF winners are:

• ESF Outstanding Individual – Scott who is from the North West (on an ESF project funded by the National Offender Management Service Co-financing Organisation – CFO)
• ESF Project of the Year – Genius Within which is based in the South East (ESF funded by the National Offender Management Service CFO)

We also have two runners up:

• ESF Outstanding Individual runner up – Tim from Derbyshire (on an ESF project funded by the Skills Funding Agency CFO)
• ESF Project of the Year runner up – Central Sussex College (ESF funded by Skills Funding Agency CFO)

The Learning and Work Institute announced winners live on Twitter, Facebook andInstagram. They were also tweeted from the @england1420england account.
All of the winners’ stories, including the ESF winners and runners up are available to watch on the Festival of Learning website and YouTube channel.

Continuous Improvement work
Since May this year, DCLG has been implementing a programme of Continuous Improvement, using Lean tools and techniques to eliminate non value added steps in a number of our processes. We have listened to what you said during the Partnership Working Review and the feedback we received from the stakeholder survey earlier this year and have been working to improve a number of processes within European Programmes. This has included a review of the outline and full application processes, looking at how we can issue funding agreements more quickly, how we can deal more effectively with procurement and other legal issues, Project Engagement Visits, On the Spot Checks and claims.

There is still much work to do, but we have already made improvements to the outline and full applications so they are more logical and streamlined and our outline assessment and full appraisal processes, so we can more quickly complete these without compromising on our regulatory and legal obligations. This work is now more important than ever given the challenges we face to legally contract projects leading up to the Autumn Statement.

We will continue to review and improve our processes and hope that you welcome the improvements we have made. We would really like to your feedback on the changes and will be in touch again very shortly to seek your views.

Contacts and useful resources
Visit the Programme website pages at www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding
Follow the developments on the Programme on Twitter @esif1420england
Take a look at our YouTube channel

To subscribe and provide feedback on the Bulletin email esif@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Next Bulletin – October 2016