When UK ministers invited a fresh round of applications to the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund for economically struggling areas in 2022, Durham county council was optimistic.
Whitehall officials had praised a previous application from the north-east authority, which includes some of the UK’s poorest former mining communities, as an exemplar of “what a bid should look like”, recalls Amanda Hopgood, the council’s Liberal Democrat leader.
Encouraged, the authority paid consultants £1mn to draw up five more lengthy applications tailored to Whitehall’s exacting criteria and tight deadlines.
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