Tom Frostick, Policy & Programmes Manager at University Alliance, has written a piece for Wonkhe suggesting how the government can replace EU structural funding after Brexit. He calls for a ‘transition fund’ to be made a priority to ‘ensure continuity and prevent the abandonment of projects that are approved or committed while Britain remains in the EU’.
As for the successor programme itself, we have an opportunity to replicate the strengths of structural funding while removing the less popular aspects.
As with the current programme, funding should continue to be allocated to regions according to need using appropriate indicators. Together with these new metrics, a National Framework could then be introduced which informs not just the volume of funding that the government allocates to each region but also the balance of resource afforded to skills development, business support, R&D and so on. The Framework would replace objectives set at a European level and could be subject to oversight from an independent ‘Shared Prosperity Commission’.
As anchor institutions, universities are principal enablers of structural fund-supported projects in their region, often providing large amounts of cash for match funding, waiving overheads, and achieving demonstrable impact along the way.
Read Tom’s full blog here.
