Council drops judicial review threat over levelling up funding

Durham Council has ruled out pursuing a judicial review over the Government’s approach to awarding levelling up funding after estimating the cost of litigation would exceed £100,000.

In December last year, the local authority called on the Government to repay the £1.2m in costs of its five failed levelling up bids after claiming the rules were changed without its knowledge.

It later considered pursuing a judicial review, but has since found that the cost of such a challenge would be between £100,000 to £150,000 “at the very least”.

Cllr Amanda Hopgood, Leader of Durham County Council, said: “The legal advice tells us that even if we were to succeed, it wouldn’t reverse the highly disappointing outcome of the government’s process, which we all agree was lacking in clarity and fairness.”

“Therefore, after weighing everything up, we don’t believe that pursuing a judicial review would be in the council’s or the public interest.”

She noted the council had consistently lobbied government ministers for a reimbursement of its bidding costs, “but unfortunately this has been refused by government”.

Cllr Hopgood said the council would now focus now on making the most of the work it put into the bids and would use the content from the bids to apply to other funding streams.

Adam Carey