Regional Development Agencies (RDA) are to help fund the Government’s recent housing rescue package following a £300m cut to their budgets over the next three years.

The cuts will be made across all nine RDAs and will be determined by the size of each of their budgets. Instead of being allocated to regeneration projects the money will now be used to help councils and local authorities purchase a property or a share of its equity from an owner who is facing the risk of repossession.

Prior to this announcement, RDAs received a total budget of £2.2bn, although following a spending review this was to be reduced to £2bn. It is unclear as to how the agencies will be affected by this reduction and what this means for the regeneration projects which they support.

Steven Broomhead, chief executive of the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA), told PIN: “The £300m cut in the RDAs’ budget will largely affect expenditure in 2010/11. We are very supportive of new methods that inspire business confidence, particularly in the vitally important construction sector and those methods that also get the housing market moving again, as this in turn will boost regional economies.

“However, we also have a duty to highlight the future implications of this decision. We have to be clear what the repercussions of reducing future regeneration budgets will have within each region and the RDAs are working on the detail of that at the moment. RDAs will work closely with its partners and the Government to manage the implications of this budget cut and ensure negative impact is minimised.”