Up to 17 jobs at an employment support charity are at risk due to a break in funding between the end of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) and a proposed new fund.
In the Senedd last week, Welsh cabinet secretary Rebecca Evans gave an update on progress in developing a plan to invest £547m of UK government funding through the Local Growth Fund for Wales, as the UKSPF comes to an end on 31 March.
The UKSPF was launched in April 2022 to succeed EU structural funds following Brexit, with £2.6bn of funding for local investment by March 2025 and an extra £900m for 2025-26.
In her statement, Evans said the Local Growth Fund for Wales, which will have different objectives to the UKSPF, will launch this April and end in March 2029.
She said the Welsh government had proposed a transition year for the new fund to “help us mitigate some impacts of” the UKSPF.
Môn CF, a charity that supports people on the Welsh Anglesey island and has 31 staff, told Civil Society that the gap between funding programmes “has created immediate financial uncertainty” and placed up to 17 jobs at risk.
Seven redundancies already
A spokesperson for Môn CF said these 17 roles were directly funded through the UKSPF, adding that since the initial notification, seven staff members have taken voluntary redundancy.
“We’re currently using organisational reserves and alternative funding sources to temporarily bridge the gap, but this isn’t sustainable in the longer term,” they said.
They said that in the 2025-26 financial year, the charity received £1.12m through the UKSPF, which represented around 22% of its £5.24m total annual income.
“This funding directly supported staff posts and frontline community provision.”
They said that, as the rollout of the Local Growth Fund in Wales has not been agreed or formally signed off yet, “there’s no certainty that we’ll receive any funding at all”.
“Without confirmed funding and a clear start date, we cannot guarantee the continuation of posts previously supported through the UKSPF,” they said.
“This uncertainty makes forward planning extremely difficult and risks disrupting vital services delivered to communities.”
Welsh government ‘unhappy’ with capital-split funding
In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the local growth funding will be around 70% capital funding, marking a departure from the UKSPF which was predominantly revenue-based.
Evans said in her statement that the Welsh government was “deeply unhappy with the capital-split revenue”.
“We’ve been pressing UK government to look again at that. At the moment, it’s 70% capital, 30% revenue,” she said.
“That’s really challenging, but I don’t think that we’re in a place now where we’re going to see a change in mind from the UK government on that particular point, so we’re working really hard with local government to make sure that the funding is well spent and well targeted.”
On the transition year, Evans said “partners raised significant concerns about the loss of revenue, the heavy weighting towards capital, and the short-term funding cycle”.
“We’re working closely with local government to mitigate these impacts wherever possible, while the design of our transition arrangements directly reflects local government requests to maintain key capacity while we prepare for a more regional approach.”
Evans added that the Welsh government is looking to refine its investment priorities to the three most critical areas for productivity growth, so that the funding is not spread “too thinly”.
These are business competitiveness, demand-led skills and tackling economic inactivity, and regional infrastructure.
