Levelling up was the core mission of Boris Johnson’s administration. After a long gestation, the Levelling Up White Paper was finally published in February 2020, followed by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill in May.
Under Liz Truss’s brief premiership, it was not clear what the future of levelling up was. However, Rishi Sunak has put it centre stage again, rooting his government’s mandate in the 2019 manifesto and reappointing Michael Gove as secretary of state. The Autumn Statement also seemed to point to the centrality of the Levelling Up agenda with new county deals announced and additional announcements around the Levelling Up Fund. This is important because we desperately need levelling up to address both persistent economic disparities between different parts of the country and a growing democratic deficit that leaves people feeling they have no control over the future of their areas.
The Levelling Up White Paper sets out ambitious ‘missions’ that encompass health, wellbeing, identity and agency as well as the economy. But how far do the Paper and subsequent Bill deliver on this? Unfortunately, they raise as many questions as they answer.
They envisage further devolution very much along the lines of the city region settlements of 2015-16. That’s not a bad thing but it remains stuck in the paradigm of local government as service deliverer, rather than seeing it as a democratically legitimate place leader.
The devolution on offer is too miserly and too narrow. It’s limited to growth and infrastructure, tied to specific governance structures and focused on transport, infrastructure, investment and skills. There’s little about public service reform, there’s no fiscal devolution, and there’s little real local power. And of course, there’s not much money.
Moreover, there are a growing number of mechanisms to make local government more accountable to the centre (we could debate whether elected mayors fall into this category or not) and there’s no real attempt to develop a sustainable funding system for local government. Instead, we have a long list of “programmes”, “funds” and “strategies”, including the Levelling Up Fund, the Towns Fund and the Shared Prosperity Fund, all of which look likely to play a key role in financing local government for the foreseeable future. This competitive bidding approach to funding mitigates against innovation, collaboration or long-term strategic thinking.
The Autumn Statement talked about exploring single departmental style settlements with the Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities which is better, but this is all deferred to the next Spending Review so we probably shouldn’t hold our breath.
The net effect of this is that local institutions and local communities do not have the wherewithal in terms of funding or powers to foster the sort of bottom-up innovation or strategic agility that we need if we are to deliver sustainable growth and effectively tackle the complex challenges that we face.
At LGIU, we have argued that effective levelling up can only be delivered in partnership with empowered and empowering councils. If we want places to level up and to stay levelled up, we need real devolution that gives local leaders the incentives and the tools to drive sustained and sustainable growth and to align it with the political identity, needs and aspirations of local areas. That’s how we will achieve a form of levelling up that is transformative not cyclical. That’s certainly a prize worth pursuing.
To achieve it, the government will need to let go, to worry less about imposing structures and more about measuring outcomes. They need to put councils in the driving seat backed by a stable and predictable funding regime.
Whether they have the vision or the political bravery to do this during an era of fiscal tightening remains to be seen.
Key Points:
• The Levelling Up White Paper and Bill are too narrow in scope to properly deliver on the agenda.
• Local authorities must be empowered by new devolution powers for levelling up to work.
This article originally appeared in The Leaders Council’s special report on ‘The Levelling Up agenda’, published on November 30, 2022. Read the full special report here.
Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash
