“According to figures from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the region was on course by 2020 to have benefited from a total of £2.5bn of funding – EU cash matched with public and private investment – since the turn of the century.
Headline projects completed with EU backing have included a £132m scheme to bring super-fast broadband to the far south-west, three innovation centres, rail line improvements and the development of a glitzy university campus at Penryn, near Falmouth.
It wasn’t going to end there. Between now and 2020, key projects supported by EU funding were set to include exciting work around aerospace – with Newquay touted as a possible site for the proposed spaceport announced in the Queen’s speech – and in geothermal energy.” …
… In the hours that followed the referendum result, Cornwall council and the local enterprise partnership (LEP) sought reassurances that they would not lose their funding and were mocked on social media, where critics claimed they had voted out and then asked if they could keep the EU cash anyway.
Sandra Rothwell, chief executive of the LEP, told the Guardian it wasn’t like that. “Cornwall was one of those places with a high percentage for leave and we’re not asking Europe if we can keep the money anyway. Our focus is on getting a message to national government: We have a clearly evidenced economic need, we have very clear plans of what we want to do. We have been delivering that plan on the basis of investment up to 2020. That plan needs to continue.”
Rothwell has asked for assurances about how Cornwall will continue to be funded, both up to the point where the UK leaves the EU and in the years after that. “There has been no clarification yet,” she said.” …
East Devon Watch 