Executive must help fill growth fund shortfall, Northern Ireland Secretary says

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said the Stormont Executive has to “put some money in” to support community groups impacted by the switch to the Local Growth Fund.

The chairwoman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, said the voluntary sector had been left in an “intolerable” position, adding that “it’s not right that the Government is doing this”.

In 2023, EU funding to charities and community groups in Northern Ireland from its European Social Fund (ESF) was ended because of Brexit.

It was replaced by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), which will in turn be replaced by the Local Growth Fund next year.

That new fund has a 70/30 capital-to-revenue split, resulting in funding cuts to the voluntary and community sector, prompting the Executive to write to UK Communities Secretary Steve Reed calling for “a more favourable resource allocation”.

The letter stated that the “much-reduced quantum of the Local Growth Fund will have a significant and detrimental impact on achieving local growth, and the capital/revenue split of this fund makes matters much worse”.

The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) had criticised the lack of clarity and warned that nearly 24,000 people face losing access to support.

On Wednesday, Ms Antoniazzi said community groups “don’t need buildings, they need to be employing people”.

She said: “Those other routes that have been suggested aren’t going to provide that stability of being able to keep people employed and delivering those services.”

She added: “I find it absolutely unbelievable that we can’t move back from it.”

Ms Antoniazzi continued: “Sorry to get so passionate about it, but you’ve met these people, you’ve met these people. It’s not right that the Government is doing this.

“What can we do? And what can you do as Secretary of State and minister for Northern Ireland?

“It’s intolerable, is all I can say and I just hope that you can push the right buttons to make this change, because I don’t see how else in the short period of time that these charities and third sector people have got, we can turn it around otherwise.”

Northern Ireland minister Matthew Patrick said he and Mr Benn were asking “what role we can play in helping” charitable bodies, but highlighted the responsibility for the Executive, who had been given “a record settlement to allow those decisions to be made about what should be funded”.

UUP MP Robin Swann said voluntary organisations “would rather have a revenue stream than a capital stream” and “that’s where the 70/30 split is really damaging”.

Mr Benn said: “We’ve got a problem and the question is, what are we going to do about the problem?

“I must be frank with the committee, that 70/30 split is not going to change and as you would expect, as ministers representing the interests of Northern Ireland, we have done our job.”

He then told the committee that the funding for the Local Growth Fund came from the spending review. Across the UK, that funding was put into a scheme called Pride of Place, but, Mr Benn said in Northern Ireland, “we want to be able to spend the money in a different way”.

“We then had to discuss with the Executive of the resource that is available, how would you like it to be divvied up?”, he said.

He told the committee some of this funding was put into other Executive programmes.

“So we listened to what the Executive had to say about how to split the money that is available, but we remain with a problem, “ he said.

“And in the end, it doesn’t really matter where funding comes from, if we’re all agreed that the continuation of these programmes is important there is a means of doing that.”

Mr Benn then identified unspent money in EU programme Peace Plus and added: “It’s perfectly fair and reasonable to point out, if the Executive is concerned about this, and the Executive has raised the issue with us, you’ve got the extra money that we gave yesterday, which you were not expecting, that you could put some of that to help these programmes to continue.”

Ms Antoniazzi said it’s “unbelievable that the Government didn’t see this coming”.

DUP leader Gavin Robinson said Mr Benn was “totally disingenuous” to suggest the Executive which is “already overstretched” can fill the gap in the Local Growth Fund after the Government “chose to completely strip vital community services of money that previously had been made available”.

Mr Benn replied: “I don’t think it’s disingenuous to say the decision has been taken over here because it’s a different fund and there’s a different split, but we can continue to spend time back and forth saying, ‘isn’t it awful’, and it’s truly awful for the voluntary sector organisations involved.

“The question is, what are we going to do about it now?

“And the fact remains that it is open if the Executive thinks that these programmes are really important, and they clearly do, because of the representations we’re having, it is open to the Executive to put some money in alongside the money that the Government is putting in.”

Mr Robinson later said there would be “truly awful consequences for community services as a direct result of choices made by you and your Government”, to which the Northern Ireland Secretary replied: “It would be the Executive’s choice, it’s not just down to the Government.”