Architect Liam O’Connor has welcomed a surprise funding boost from the chancellor that will help push his D-Day memorial in Normandy closer to the finish line.

In yesterday’s spending review Sajid Javid committed up to £7m of new government cash to deliver the memorial to the British forces who lost their lives in the landings in June 1944.

The project, on a hill above one of the beaches near Ver-sur-Mer, has received significant government backing already when in 2017 the then-prime minister Theresa May and chancellor Philip Hammond allocated it £20m of Libor funding from fines levied on the banking industry.

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