Councils spent £12.5m on bids for Liz Truss’s investment zones, data shows

Exclusive: Labour compiled analysis of waste suffered by cash-strapped local authorities on the scheme, binned by the government weeks later

Cash-strapped councils are estimated to have spent £12.5m compiling bids to launch low tax and regulation-lite “investment zones” that were binned by the government just weeks later, new figures suggest.

Labour, which compiled analysis about the waste suffered by local authorities, hit out at the “cost of Tory chaos” given the scheme was effectively ditched by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, when he took over after Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership.