Nichols played a key role for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) on the Towns Fund, a £3.6bn programme announced in 2019 to enable 101 towns in England to level up and drive long term sustainable economic regeneration to deliver economic and productivity growth and to improve prospects for their communities.

Challenge
101 towns were selected by Government to consider and propose capital projects which would best enable them to grow and ‘level up’.  Each town was required to establish a Board of local political, private sector and community representatives to create investment plans for up to £25m of funding, or up to £50m where regional or national significance could be shown.  

Learning from previous funding programmes indicated that these Boards and the associated local authorities were likely to require specialist, independent support to develop sound bids and business cases for their projects.  DLUHC also required a delivery partner to run the Towns Fund programme efficiently and at pace.  The Delivery Partner was responsible for ensuring that each place was able to access the bespoke support it required, and, crucially, also ensuring that lessons were learned across towns and there were opportunities for knowledge sharing between them.

As part of the Towns Fund Delivery Partner, Nichols was selected for its expertise in providing strategic advice on complex projects and programmes and joined a consortium with other specialists in urban regeneration, stakeholder management and financial advice. The programme commenced as COVID-19 began to impact in the UK, so the range of support offered by the delivery partner had to be provided entirely remotely, and to be responsive to changing conditions across the UK.

Nichols directly supported over a third of the towns included in the programme with strategic and technical advice.  We were able to bring significant experience of engaging and managing stakeholders across a diversity of sectors, including an understanding of how to navigate the local government landscape.  We provided critical challenge to enable Boards to make effective decisions on proposed projects, with clear rationale for doing so.  We also provided and coordinated technical support from other experts, including how to set strategy, prioritise projects and engage stakeholders and funders.