Congratulations to the 111 areas across the UK that will benefit from a share of the latest £2.1 billion round of government funding for levelling up, announced last month.
The fund will provide investment in communities, creating new jobs and economic growth, and helping restore people’s pride in the places where they live.
In our media response to the announcement of the awards, the LGA called for levelling up to be locally led by evidence of where investment needs to go, not based on costly competitive bids between areas.
The LGA has long argued that the current Whitehall funding model of bids and multiple funding streams – not just for levelling up, but other key areas, such as employment and skills, and climate change – is inefficient and ineffective.
It’s not in line with the aims set out in the Levelling Up White Paper, and it is not trusting local leaders – all of whom are ambitious for their local areas – to make the decisions that matter.
West Midlands Mayor Andy Street’s comments about Whitehall’s broken “bidding and begging-bowl culture” quite rightly made the headlines.
LGA Vice President Baroness Pinnock also summarised the issues succinctly in the House of Lords.
Noting that 111 out of 525 bids for levelling-up funding were successful in this round, with each bid estimated to cost £30,000, she said: “That’s £12 million of hard-pressed council funding basically wasted on a bid. Cannot the minister find a more effective way, such as devolving the money to local authorities, so this money is not wasted when it’s desperately needed?”.
At the LGA’s annual conference last summer, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove pledged to “reduce the number of [funding] streams and reduce the burdens” on councils, and to “give the greatest possible devolution of powers to local leaders”.
With inflation also eating away at the value of those levelling-up bids that were successful, now really is the time to start doing just that.