The government is set to spend up to £1.4bn over the next four years on regional development agency projects and the cost of dismantling the regeneration bodies.

The government has today confirmed that it will be forced to keep spending on the doomed regional development agencies until 2015. It will also have to make redundancy payments as well as managing the costs of their closure, which is due in April 2012.

Of the £1.4bn due to be paid out, the Department for Communities and Local Government will provide £923m, while the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) will pay around £423m.

Next year, BIS will pay £297m. It will then pay £69m in 2012-13, £37m in 2013-14, and £32m in the following year.

More detail on how the funds will be allocated is expected to be delivered in the government’s white paper on regional growth.

The paper will discuss how the government intends to manage the transition from RDAs to the local enterprise partnerships  that are set to replace them.

It will also say whether these partnerships between businesses and local authorities will take over the running of RDAs’ projects or take over ownership of their many regeneration assets.

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