RGF: A growing controversy?

There’s a palpable sense of disappointment about the failure to secure anything other than a few crumbs for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire businesses from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund.
This £1.4bn pot was set up by the government in the wake of its decision to get rid of regional development agencies like Emda.
While emda at one stage had an annual budget north of £150m, the amount of money Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire have managed to squeeze out of the RGF is a pitiful £1.6m. Out of 38 bids made for projects in the two counties, only one was successful.
The successful bid relates to the planned expansion of Molecular Profiles in Nottingham. Levering £8.4m of its own, the pharmaceutical research company plans to open a new building at Nottingham Science Park and create up to 65 new jobs.
This is a significant vote of confidence in an important sector for Nottingham, and Molecular Profiles CEO Nikin Patel is to be congratulated.
But what about everyone else? There are rumblings and machinations about why the 37 other local bids failed, but I suspect ours is not the only region where this soul-searching and teeth-gnashing is taking place.
Today’s announcement covers only the first of three rounds of funding bids, and has accounted for £450m of the £1.4bn available. So there is still £950m to bid for. It is the second round, which is underway now and closes shortly, which will see the lion’s share of the cash allocated.
We don’t know yet whether any of the unsuccessful bids from the first round will be considered again, but the word from Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber is that they had expected four of the 38 bids to be successful in round one – which suggests to me they will be looked at again.
I suspect the issue is that the Government's preference will be for projects which create wuick jobs, rather than trophy projects like physical infrastructure, which may only work in the long-term. It wants quick wins.
Just to complicate matters, the second round of RGF bidding coincides with the start of bidding for £19m of European Regional Development Fund cash available to the East Midlands. This is being administered by emda, though the word is that bids for this can be 'aligned' with bids for RGF money. Baffled? You're not alone...
There is a degree of paranoia in the East Midlands about its weak identity, and Business Secretary Vince Cable found himself having to reassure the region this morning that the decision was not a personal slight. That’s one to ponder – I’m not aware he has visited Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire since taking office.
There are some fairly blunt questions the government has to answer, though. It is almost certain that some of the bids will have failed precisely because the guidance from Whitehall about what they were looking for was far from clear.
That, in itself, is symptomatic of the government’s tendency to make policy on the hoof: having decided long ago that it did not want to put money into regional development agencies, it had no clear plan for what might fill the administrative void these organisations were bound to leave behind.
I blogged last week about the decision to maintain some parts of the Government Office for the East Midlands operation, and the concerns that – when put together with emda’s demise – it left the region voiceless in Whitehall.
For business, the most important part of the Government operation is the new regional representative for Mr Cable’s department, Rowena Limb. A robust conversation with her about Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire’s expectations for the next round of RGF money will be important.
So will an invitation to the Business Secretary, so that he can come and inspect for himself this unexplored corner of the Midlands. You know what we need to say when he finally does battle his way through the undergowth and find us: Dr Cable, we presume...