Details of a £500 million fund to help kick-start housing and infrastructure development have been announced by the Government.
The Growing Places Fund will help "get Britain building again" by covering up-front capital costs that are preventing projects getting off the ground, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said.
It was unveiled at the Liberal Democrat party conference in September and is designed to unlock jobs potential by offering loans up front that are paid back after developments are eventually sold off.
Now the Government has published a list of provisional allocations to each of the 38 local enterprise partnerships introduced by the coalition Government.
Led by businesses and councils, the partnerships will make decisions on how the money is spent in their areas.
"The £500 million Growing Places Fund will unlock much-needed local infrastructure and get the homes we need built," Mr Pickles said. "It will be local enterprise partnerships, made up of the people and businesses who know their local areas best, who will decide where this cash boost will be spent. I now want to see these partnerships coming together and finding innovative ways to unlock local sites and help get Britain building again."
The kind of projects which may be helped via the scheme include road network improvements and infrastructure to deal with flooding, enabling homes to be built
Shadow communities secretary Hilary Benn said the announcement was an admission by the Government that abolishing regional development agencies (RDAs) was a "mistake".
"If this funding is simply to help the new local enterprise partnerships do some of the work that was previously done by the RDAs, unlocking and co-ordinating investment projects, but with much less funding, then people will feel short-changed," he said.
"Given this Conservative-led Government's history of failure to get money to businesses that need it through the other schemes they've announced and reannounced, they should make sure that this time the money speedily gets to the local authorities, businesses and entrepreneurs who will be at the heart of the economic recovery the country desperately needs."