Only 10% of promised Levelling Up funds truly spent, damning report finds
Only 10% of promised Levelling Up funds have truly been spent and are making a distinction to communities, a damning report has discovered.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, mentioned the degrees of delay within the Tories’ flagship plan have been “absolutely astonishing”. Her report discovered a “lack of transparency and a waste of public resources in the scheme, warning that the Government is unable to provide “any compelling examples of what Levelling Up funding has delivered so far”.
It mentioned that out of £10.47billion in whole funding dedicated from central authorities, which have to be spent between 2020-21 and 2025-26, native authorities have been in a position to spend solely £1.24billion. The committee’s report mentioned bids for “more impactful” initiatives have been misplaced as a result of ministers have been “blinded by optimism” and favoured so-called “shovel-ready” initiatives.
Yet it discovered that 60 out of 71 of those initiatives, which have been presupposed to be accomplished and delivering advantages for native individuals by March 2024, have needed to prolong to 2024-25, with additional delays doubtless. It raised issues that not sufficient was completed to grasp the readiness of schemes and the challenges going through native authorities earlier than funds have been awarded.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) advised the committee the impression of the pandemic and inflation resulted in a decrease than anticipated quantity of funding having been spent.
Labour MP Dame Meg mentioned: “The levels of delay that our report finds in one of the Government’s flagship policy platforms is absolutely astonishing. Our Committee is here to scrutinise value for money in the delivery of Government policy.
“But in the case of Levelling Up, our report finds that the Government is struggling to even get the money out of the door to begin with. Citizens deserve to begin to see the results of delivery on the ground.”
Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Angela Rayner mentioned: “The Conservatives have utterly abandoned any pretence of trying to achieve their mission to level up Britain. This report confirms that the Tories’ begging-bowl approach to funding bids has wasted scarce public resources, forcing local authorities to spend precious time, effort and funds to bid for pots of money, many of which they have no chance of getting.”
Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: “When this fund was first announced, we raised concerns that the Treasury’s idea for a bidding process would be unnecessarily costly and time-consuming. This has proved to be the case, exposing local authorities to high inflation, particularly in construction, which has driven up the cost of projects. Giving money directly to Mayors and the poorest councils would have been a far more cost-effective way of delivering a much bigger impact, in a much shorter time.”
A DLUHC spokeswoman said: “Buildings do not go up overnight and these are multi-year programmes, so it is to be expected that the capital spend ramps up in later years. But we will continue to give expert support to councils to tackle any delivery blockers so we deliver these vital projects quickly.”
