Since 2007, 10 ERDF projects have enabled 24,767 new businesses to start or move into local areas and created 114,889 jobs in England alone.
Funding for neighbourhood sustainability projects and schemes for assisted living often comes from the EU's European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), such as £15m for the Scottish Green Infrastructure project and the Renewables and Energy Efficiency in Community Housing scheme which has helped thousands of households in fuel poverty to insulate and renovate their homes.
Aimed at evening out disparities in income, wealth and opportunity across the bloc, most of the cash from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Social Fund (ESF) – both of which demand public or private co-financing from national bodies – is, obviously, spent in its poorer regions.
So-called "gratitude plaques" are a contractual requirement of receiving EU aid – but several British firms and organisations that have benefited from ERDF funding have, alas, been fined for failing to display them.
And despite Boris Johnson's noisy participation in the leave campaign, the former mayor of London was presumably happy to announce, in March last year, £560m of new ERDF and ESF funding to help create jobs, boost innovation and support businesses in the capital.
Of this €3.6bn is ERDF funding and €3.5bn ESF funding.The leave campaign will argue that the cost of EU membership outweighs this prospective loss, but there are no pledges to ensure any redistributed or repatriated money post-Brexit would go to the most disadvantaged areas and be given to councils.
In Northern Ireland, the ERDF contributed €230,073 to a project encouraging children and young people to participate in peace-building.
Current ERDF and ESF spending focuses on sustainable transport, business competitiveness, next-generation broadband and training and employment programmes.
The £1.4m Yorkshire Venture Philanthropy programme has been established by Community Foundations in Leeds, Calderdale and South Yorkshire and in partnership with Key Fund and the ERDF to support socially enterprising projects in the region that benefit the communities around them by providing new opportunities and innovative services.
