Multi-million pound regeneration and business projects for the West Midlands will be handed over to the Government as a £300 million-a-year quango winds down.

Stakes in 90 projects part-funded by Advantage West Midlands will be handed over to a “national body”, expected to be the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills when the quango closes.

The move means projects, and any return from them, could be controlled by Whitehall instead of the Local Enterprise Partnerships set up to replace regional development agencies like AWM.

This emerged following plans by the doomed quango to dispose of more than £100m of taxpayer-owned land either to the Government, councils or private developers.

Councillor Ian Jones, Sandwell’s regeneration chief, said: “We’ll have to go through Government funding hoops instead of acting with a successful regional development agency or the LEP. It’s a dilution of localism.”

The agency’s half share in the £42 million Brindley II project for 193 new homes, shops, cafes and footpaths in Smethwick is included.

In Wolverhampton, stakes in projects provided with gap funding by AWM could also be handed over. They include the £20m Citadel warehouse, on the Black Country Route in Bilston, which has been funded to the tune of £3 million.

Among stakes for transfer are 34 sites where the agency helped fund partners to buy premises, 11 sites funded for rent, 30 sites gap-funded to speed up developments and 25 further assets supported by investment for a specified use.