Coleraine and Derry City will each receive government packages worth £20 million over the next decade.
The funding was announced as part of Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget on Wednesday.
Derry City and Coleraine have been added to the ‘Long-Term Plan for Towns’ project, which was first announced last October.
The initiative has been designed to allocate funding to local authorities across England.
It involves towns setting up a new ‘towns board’, which will be tasked with drawing up a long-term plan.
Announcing the scheme last year, Rishi Sunak said: “Each town will have a £20m endowment-style fund to invest over the next decade, empowering them to develop a plan for the long-term, not a plan to the end of the financial year.”
It’s unclear whether the funding will go to the Northern Ireland Executive to be administered by the Department for Communities, or whether it will be paid direct to the Derry City and Strabane and Causeway Coast councils.
A further £2m was also announced by Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday “to boost global investment and trade opportunities for Northern Ireland”.
Meanwhile, some £2.2m in ‘Levelling Up’ funding has been awarded to Crusaders FC for the redevelopment of the South Stand at its Seaview grounds.
Crusaders’ previously missed out on a funding bid for the Shore Road Skills Centre.
The project will help create a new community education, event and skills centre encompassing sport, educational attainment, skills development, community engagement, and health and wellbeing provision.
