Funding concern as grants shift to mayoral regions

A film producer and a regional tourism manager have expressed concern about funding available to areas without directly elected mayors.

Mark Hooper, from Visit Shropshire, said the county had benefited greatly from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund in the past, but grants were increasingly going to projects in places such as the West Midlands Combined Authority area.

Luke Allen, a film producer based in Telford, said he was considering shooting parts of his next project outside the county, to qualify for funding that was not available in Shropshire.

He said: "It does feel like we're the oft-forgotten region."

Hooper said funding in the past had enabled Visit Shropshire to support "a huge amount of projects, from training workshops to marketing campaigns.

But last year the government said the Local Growth Fund would be "targeted at mayoral city regions in the North and Midlands".

It said this was "part of a shift in how growth funding is delivered".

Hooper said it could be three years before Shropshire could be included in a regional mayoral area, and that left it "in a little bit of a limbo".

He said: "What are we going to do for three years? We can't really sit around and wait for us to become a mayoral area in the future."

Allen, who runs the Telford-based Ask Seek Knock production company, is seeking £3m for his latest film, First Christmas, which he wants to set in Shrewsbury.

He hopes to start filming in the summer and household names such as Russell Tovey and Mark Addy have been attached to the project.

But regional funds will be needed to help finance it and Allen said: "A lot of them are Midlands based."

While some funds covered Shrewsbury "just about", he said there were others which were only available to productions in the West Midlands Combined Authority area.

That left him in a difficult situation, because he wanted the film to be "as Shrewsbury as we can".

But it left him asking: "Do we set the film in Shrewsbury but shoot the interiors of the house somewhere nearer Birmingham in order to qualify for these incentives?"

The BBC has approached the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for a response.

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