CORNWALL councillors have questioned whether the council should continue funding a project which they say has missed targets for job creation.

The council agreed on Tuesday to provide an extra £900,000 towards the Launchpad Programme which is run by Falmouth University.

But some councillors said the project has already been given £2 million of council funding and had created 11 full time jobs, despite having a target of 128.

The money is match-funding for a £8.424m extension of Launchpad which provides incubation and acceleration to create new Cornwall-based companies in “high-value smart specialisation markets”.

Cornwall Council will provide £900,000 with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) providing £5.1m and £2.4m from the university.

A report to council stated that five Launchpad teams have been through incubation and been incorporated and are now in the acceleration phase. Another 22 teams are currently in the incubation stage.

Bob Egerton, Cornwall Council Cabinet member for economy, told the council that “to date the project has been going well” and highlighted that one of the companies had attracted national attention.

However some councillors were concerned about the value for money of the project and the number of jobs being created.

Labour councillor Jayne Kirkham said: “I understand the need for inward investment and opportunities to bring people and ideas into Cornwall. But it has to be good value for our taxpayers in Cornwall.

“This project has had £2m from this council in 2016 and £12m all together. At the start of this project we were promised 128 long-term local jobs by early 2020.

“Now we are being promised the same output by 2022. At the moment there are five companies that have been incorporated and up and running. Those five companies only employ 11 full-time employees. The cost per job is not looking very good if you have put £12m in at the moment.

“There is a very long way to go to provide the employment we were promised at the start.”

Cllr Kirkham was also concerned that only 37% of the people on the Launchpad scheme had a Cornish postcode when they applied. She wanted to know how many of the people on the programme went to Falmouth University or grew up in Cornwall.

Cllr Egerton said the extension of the programme would create an additional 128 jobs to those created by the first phase and was “confident” it would do that.

But he admitted that “we are clearly nowhere near 128 at the moment” but said it was expected that the target could be reached by the end of the current programme later this year.

He said: “128 jobs, we haven’t reached that but we haven’t met the deadline, it is the end of the year.

“There is plenty of time, more businesses will be set up in the next weeks and months and they will take on people. We have time to meet that target.”

Independent councillor Tim Dwelly also raised concerns saying: “My concern is not that Falmouth wants to go for European funding but why do we feel we need to spend almost a million pounds of our money on this? My concern is value for money.”

Cllr Dwelly asked that Cllr Egerton and Falmouth University give a presentation to the economic development overview and scrutiny committee about the programme.

Cllr Egerton said he would welcome the scrutiny committee putting the matter on its work programme.

Nick Dixon, head of the Launchpad Programme at Falmouth University, said: “Falmouth University is committed to growing Cornwall’s economy through entrepreneurship, creativity and digital technology. Launchpad is the epitome of this commitment; it is a postgraduate progamme on which participants build high-value, high-growth businesses, hand-in-hand with global partners which have so far included Amazon, the BBC, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Pendennis. They’re using digital skills to create new, responsible, products and services for sectors including agritech, e-health, finance and entertainment.

“We are delighted that Cornwall Council has extended its partnership with Falmouth University in recognition of Launchpad’s contribution, in terms of new businesses and jobs, for the benefit of the local economy.”