A RENEWED plea has been made to the Government for long-term funding to help revitalise "struggling" Ellesmere Port town centre.

Last year, MP Justin Madders said Ellesmere Port had been "left on the scrapheap again" after it failed to make the list of towns to benefit from £3.6 billion of regeneration funding.

A cross-party group of MPs concluded in a scathing report that the process for selecting towns was "not impartial".

Now Mr Madders has used a House of Commons Backbench Business Committee debate to reinforce his appeal for Ellesmere Port to receive much-needed investment from the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

He said: "The priority to support town centres is undoubtedly the right one, but the process of deciding where that money is spent so far has undoubtedly been the wrong one.

“I have consistently talked about the importance of the high street. So many people want to have pride in their local town and to see it thriving, and the Towns Fund is one clear way of realising that ambition.

“However, is that not something that every town should have the chance to benefit from?

“Should not that fund be distributed fairly, giving everyone a slice of the pie?

“Should not we be empowering local communities to choose their own priorities, rather than making them jump through multiple hoops in a competitive bidding process that is neither fair nor transparent?"

READ: Government process which saw Ellesmere Port miss out on £25m of town regeneration funding "not impartial", MPs find

Mr Madders added: “What about other funds? When will we see the new version of the Shared Prosperity Fund? We have left the European Union, so we should have had that oven-ready to go a long time ago.

“My town centre, Ellesmere Port, is struggling. It has been struggling for a long time now.

“As in many other towns the rise of the internet and changes in shopping habits, accelerated by the pandemic, have led to shops closing down, sadly on an almost weekly basis.

“So we would welcome cash from the towns fund, but for it to be a truly transformative project it needs to address not just the symptoms of decline, but the causes."

Responding to the debate, Luke Hall, Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government, said: “We want everybody, wherever they live, to benefit from increased growth and prosperity and the Towns Fund is helping us to achieve that.

“We are investing in the places that need it most and putting local communities in charge of the decisions that affect them. The Towns Fund marks just the start of that.

“There is, of course, much more investment to come and much more to do through the levelling-up fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.”

READ: Ellesmere Port MP furious as report reveals town missed out on £25m as cash went to Tory constituencies

Back in November, the cross-party Commons Public Accounts Committee said the process for selecting towns to benefit from the Towns Fund was "not impartial" and risked undermining the integrity of the Civil Service.

In a scathing report, it said ministers in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) had picked towns on the basis of "scant" evidence and "sweeping assumptions".

The committee chair Meg Hillier said the system gave "every appearance of having been politically motivated".

While the report concluded the overall selection of the 101 towns to receive either £25 million or £50 million was "acceptable", it revealed some towns on a low-priority list had been given the go-ahead for funding at the expense of others deemed more urgently in need.

Officials had recommended that 40 towns – including Birkenhead and Runcorn – were 'high-priority' towns in need of funding, which Government ministers agreed should be funded.

However, ministers chose a mixture of medium and low-priority towns and cities for the funding to be distributed, the vast majority of them in either Conservative-held constituencies or potential Conservative constituency gains at an election.

This meant Labour-held Ellesmere Port – classed as a 'medium priority case' on criteria such as income and skills deprivation, productivity and the damage potentially caused by a no-deal Brexit – was overlooked in favour of places such as Tory marginal seat Cheadle, which was the seventh lowest priority town for the whole of England.

The MHCLG said at the time that they "completely disagree" with the committee’s criticism of the process, which they argue was "comprehensive, robust and fair".