Durham County Council, The Auckland Project

Durham County Council, The Auckland Project has a proposed award totalling £28 million to TAP, a charity which revolves around the regeneration of Bishop Auckland, towards the costs of five interlinked projects. This value compromises of awards from the Council’s own funds, and both the Stronger Towns and High Street Funds.

Our key takeaways from the Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) report are:

• The Assessment should more clearly explain what is likely to happen should risks of the viability gap becoming larger than the subsidy materialise with the receipt not being willing to fund additional costs. This explanation could be done by making use of the assessment information in the appendices for issues such as the monitoring processes proposed.
• Consideration which is made around reduced or alternatively designed subsidies should be detailed under Principle B as well as under the appropriateness discussions in Principle E.
• The Assessment should present only beneficial effects that relate directly to the policy objective and exclude unrelated wider potential benefits. For example, here the decision on whether to exclude information on the building of new homes as a benefit of the subsidy.
• Assessments should explains, using relevant evidence, the changes in economic behaviour brought about by the Subsidy which would mean that without intervention the policy objective identified would not be met.
• Assessments should consider and evidence the impacts on competition and investment. Within this they should identify the main markets impacted and any likely distortion.

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