The leader of Somerset Council has defended spending more than £225,000 on bids to the government’s levelling up fund.

Councils across England were invited by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to submit bids to two rounds of the levelling up fund – with a third round expected to accept bids later in the year.

Research by the Reach Data Unit has revealed that Somerset County Council and the four district councils – all of which have since been abolished – spent a combined total of £227,605 on consultants as part of the bidding process – with only two bids proving to be successful.

The leader of the new Somerset Council has said the investment was justified by the amount they have received from the government.

However, he also criticised the process as a “beauty parade” and said more genuine devolution to rural areas was needed.

Five Somerset bids have been submitted to the levelling up fund across the two rounds – one in round one (which was successful) and four in round two (of which only one was successful).

The first round bid, by Somerset County Council, saw just over £10m allocated in late-2021 towards upgrades of the ‘Bridgwater northern corridor’ – comprising the ongoing work on the Dunball roundabout near the M5, improvements to the Cross Rifles roundabout (where the A38 and A39 meet) and new walking and cycling infrastructure across the town.

To produce the bid, a total of £27,600 was paid to consultancy firm WSP – which previously produced a study for the council into the options for protecting the B3191 at Blue Anchor and Watchet on the west Somerset coast.

For the second round bids, numerous different consultancy firms were used for the four bids, with local authorities working together across the parliamentary constituency boundaries.

The sole successful bid came in the Bridgwater and West Somerset constituency, with £19.7m being awarded in January to turn the former Bridgwater community hospital on Salmon Parade into a health and social care academy, with a satellite site at the Seahorse Centre on Stephenson Road in Minehead.

For this bid, a total of £67,505 was spent on consultants – with £30,000 going to PER Consulting, £21,580 to Benjamin and Beauchamp Architects, and £15,925 to EIBC.

None of the three other bids – for the Somerton and Frome, Taunton Deane and Wells constituencies – managed to attract a single penny from central government (with no bid for the Yeovil constituency being submitted).

The Somerton and Frome bid – submitted jointly by Mendip District Council and South Somerset District Council – requested just over £10m to deliver co-working space in Wincanton and a possible arts venue within the Saxonvale site in Frome town centre.

The Wells bid – submitted by Mendip District Council and Sedgemoor District Council – asked for £19.3m for a series of regeneration projects spread over Cheddar, Highbridge and Shepton Mallet.

Stantec Ltd. worked on both bids, at a cost of £125,000.

The Taunton Deane bid – dubbed ‘A Vision for Tonedale’ – requested £20m (the maximum amount) to regenerate the Tonedale Mill and Tone Works sites on the northern edge of Wellington.

Stantec Ltd. also worked on this project, charging Somerset West and Taunton Council £7,500 for the bid – bringing the grand total spent to £227,605.

Councillor Bill Revans, who has served as leader of Somerset Council since May 2022, said this level of spending on consultants was necessary in order to attract government grants – and that Somerset had a good record to securing such funding.

He said: “The government’s current approach to awarding funding through competitions does usually require councils to use specialist consultants with upfront costs and no certainty about success.

“However, when you look at our track record across various funding streams, including the levelling up fund, the towns fund, the future high streets fund, the shared prosperity fund, growth deal funding and other mechanisms, as a set of councils we have been pretty successful in securing much needed funds with favourable returns on investment.

“For example, Sedgemoor District Council invested £192,000 and secured £19.7m.”

Despite this track record, Mr Revans said he was unhappy with the present system of bidding, arguing that more funding choices should be devolved down to local authorities.

He elaborated: “Personally I find this idea of a beauty parade between councils a bit demeaning and far from fair.

“I agree with Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, who said that it is ‘a very odd way of going about things, having civil servants in London choosing between different projects… surely the principle of devolution is much more about trusting the people who are close to the action’.

“If national funding was devolved directly to councils this could reduce spend on consultants and overall costs to taxpayers.”

The council has not confirmed whether it intends to submit a bid to the third round of the levelling up fund, or indicated which of the previous projects (if any) will form part of such a bid.