The breakdown is as follows:
- A few training and employment interventions for NEETs, over 50s and undergraduate university places (not free, you still have to pay). 4,200 people will be affected by this for six months.
- Reduction in rates for small businesses and freezing car parking charges. This will benefit retail but only a little because everyone shops online now. And it will only help 3,500 SMEs. And by 20%.
- A chunk of money for farmers (£15,000,000) presumably on top of their EU payments.
- A chunk of money for construction (£40,000,000) because we don’t already have enough empty buildings.
- Further money for construction in the maintenance of schools (£10,000,000) because someone needs to think of the poor property developers
And this:
“The Executive is already committed to delivering over £5billion of capital investment in the current budget period. To boost employment in the construction sector this package will deliver a range of new measures to improve our schools, roads and accelerate nearly £60million of capital projects.”
Which is all support for the construction sector. That’s £5,000,000,000.
And the worst bit?
The £200m is not new money. It is money moved from one department to another or re-prioritised towards different projects.
It is money moved from next year to this year.
So, £200M to be spent now. But we’ll have £200M less in next years budget.