This report aims to provide a detailed analysis of the Levelling Up initiative, a flagship policy of the previous Conservative Government designed to address spatial inequalities across the UK. It contains key insights and recommendations which can be aligned with the current Labour Government’s focus on mission-led growth.
The authors have developed a simplified monitoring framework to assess the alignment of funding and outcomes with the stated policy objectives. This highlights the potential for the current Labour Government’s mission-led growth strategy to focus on equitable funding, robust evaluation mechanisms, and longer-term investment to reduce inequalities across the UK.
Key findings and recommendations:
- Significant gaps in economic growth, living standards and job opportunities between areas, particularly in northern England and coastal towns, persist across the UK. Given that regional disparities can take decades to address, the Labour Government should focus on sustainable, long-term investment in infrastructure, skills and public services, with regular progress reviews.
- Despite £13.2bn having been set aside for Levelling Up, the correlation between funding allocation and deprivation was not robust. The Labour Government should ensure that future funding is more directly aligned with deprivation indices and updated spending needs, prioritising regions that have been historically underfunded.
- Productivity, health and education-related outcomes between the best and worst-performing local authorities have widened. While funding alone may not resolve such disparities, the Labour Government should establish clear accountability frameworks for local and regional authorities in managing funds and achieving growth objectives.
- More effort is needed to collect and standardise subnational data to assess the longer-term impacts of large-scale and complex policy initiatives. A whole system approach would see the Office for Local Government and the proposed Office for Value for Money facilitate better decision-making through cross-cutting collaboration and the use of unconventional and more timely data.
- Fragmented funding challenges the government’s ability to evaluate value for money. Clear guidance could facilitate the creation of a centralised monitoring and evaluation framework, connecting each source of funding with the changes observed in the targets set for each mission.
The authors have also developed an innovative dashboard that benchmarks performance data for each council in England with its Nearest Neighbour, the median of all local authorities in England and the average of the selected authority’s ten Nearest Neighbours. Users can see how the statistical relationship between similar places has changed over time and compare councils on a basis that does not rely solely on geographic proximity.
Recommendations for the Labour Government’s mission-led growth strategy include targeting investment to deprived areas, data-driven policy making, a focus on long-term outcomes, and strengthening accountability through timely monitoring and evaluation.