Investment in Wolverhampton has dried up since the city has been “left to its own devices” and cut adrift by the abolition of regional development agency Advantage West Midlands, the shadow chancellor has claimed.

Ed Balls branded “missed opportunities” such as the £300 million Summer Row shopping centre as “disastrous”.

The Regional Growth Fund set up by the Government to bankroll job creation was “tiny”, the Labour minister added.

No projects in the Black Country were included in round one of the £1.4 billion cashpot.

Quango AWM is due to be scrapped in 2012 and will be replaced by the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership, which has backed bids to the fund.

Mr Balls was speaking on a visit to Wolverhampton yesterday afternoon as he toured the Broadway Gardens care home in Bushbury.

“You look at Wolverhampton and there’s no doubt there were more jobs being created here because of the regional development agency,” he said.

“If you leave a community like this to its own devices, the danger is a city like Wolverhampton does not get the investment it needs. Government has a very important role to play.

“Other than the MPs, who is standing up for Wolverhampton at the minute?”

He added: “Can Wolverhampton afford missed opportunities, developments and jobs going elsewhere? I think it’s a disaster.”

Mr Balls repeated his mantra that the coalition was cutting “too fast, too deep”.

“First of all the economy has got to be growing. We have got to have optimism about the future,” he said.

“There’s no argument between us and them that we have got to get the deficit down.

“If you try and do that in the fastest possible way, confidence falls and people don’t invest, the economy doesn’t grow.

“That’s why I have been saying George Osborne has made a mistake with the VAT rise and he should admit it.”

The shadow chancellor also dismissed concerns over Labour leader Ed Miliband’s performance, saying: “I think if you had said to us a year ago we would be ahead in the polls and make a gain of 800 seats across the country in the local elections, we would have been happy with that.

“We know we’ve got more to do.”