Competitive City and Urban Policy : Modelling Discretionary Grant Allocation in the UK, 1994-1998

The aim of the research was to examine the relative contribution of need, bid-quality and political factors to the success of bids made to the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) programme in England between 1994 and 1997. 1196 bid documents were collected from archive and other sources. Each was subjected to content analysis to measure numerous aspects of bid quality, after suitable checks of the coding frame and inter-coder reliability. Each bid was given a score on a set of need variables ultimately derived from Census data. Finally each bid was given a score on a set of political variables, reflecting how important the area the bid came from was electorally, and the ability of local MPs to lobby on behalf of the bid. Tobit regression models were built to explain variation in this, depending on need, bid-quality and political factors.