High immigration areas to get millions in top-ups for public services within weeks

The fund is being brought forward at a rapid pace

High immigration to an area does not necessarily put pressure on local public services (AFP/Getty)

Areas with high immigration will start receiving millions of pounds in top-ups within weeks to reinforce their public services, The Independent understands.

The Conservatives’ 2015 manifesto pledged a Controlling Immigration Fund to ease pressure on schools, housing and other services in places where rapid population growth has outstripped investment.

At the Tory conference in Birmingham earlier this month Home Secretary Amber Rudd revealed that the fund would include £140m.

Though no date for the cash had been announced, ministers and civil servants are understood to be putting the finishing touches to its implementation.

The system is expected to be similar to the £50m Migration Impact Fund introduced under the last Labour government and scrapped by David Cameron’s government within five months of taking power.

Ms Rudd has criticised Labour’s original fund, which Labour has pledged to bring back since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015. She said the party seemed “to think it’s a substitute for taking action to reduce immigration”.

Asked this week for more details about the new replacement fund, ministers said in a written parliamentary answer that it would be rolled out “later this year”, narrowing its launch down to the next seven weeks of parliamentary time before MPs go back to their constituencies for Christmas.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the fund would include £140m in cash (Getty)

More details of how cash will be awarded under the fund are understood to be on the way in the coming weeks.

Though the new fund will be larger in cash terms than the one scrapped in 2010, its effect will still be limited. A figure of £140m is roughly the cost of one large housing development – but the money will be spread across the whole country.

The Home Secretary said her new fund would be “designed specifically to ease the pressures on public services in areas of high migration”.

“Labour’s fund was ineffective and focused funding on migrants rather than the pressures caused by migration,” she told the party’s conference earlier this month.

“Money was spent on translation services, rather than English lessons. Councils were given money to promote recycling, rather than the support they needed to ease housing pressures.”

It is not clear exactly what formula will be used to award cash under the fund. A system of giving directly to areas with a high foreign-born population would see the money overwhelmingly given to London and other major cities such as Manchester – with rural areas disproportionately losing out.

The policy’s implementation will be complicated by the research suggesting that high immigration actually tends to have a positive effect on many public services overall. Areas with lots of immigrants tend to have a younger population, which reduces pressures on the local health service, an Oxford University study found last year.

However, the study found that “native” people who left areas high in immigration increased health service pressures in the places they moved to.