Levelling up: your questions answered

Last week (9 June), Carmen Suarez, Director (Jobshare), Levelling Up: Major Programmes, joined attendees from across the country to talk directly to Towns about Levelling Up in the context of the Towns Fund.

TFDP hosted this event for DLUHC to lead, with the aim of providing more clarity on Levelling Up to the Towns Fund towns. This blog summarises TFDP’s reflections from the event.

Levelling Up means many different things to different people, so the first part of the webinar was designed as an open forum for Towns to provide their perspectives and experiences. Attendees gave us their thoughts on what Levelling Up means to them, the challenges, and priorities they face, and public perceptions of Levelling Up within their own Town.

First, we asked: What does Levelling Up mean to you?

Positive sentiments such as ‘growth’, ‘opportunity’ and ‘fairness’ supported the overarching theme centring around regeneration. However, practical delivery challenges are clear – with some participants noting ‘short timescales’, ‘challenging’ and ‘confused’.

We were also interested in Towns’ priorities for Levelling Up.

Using the priorities outlined in Government policy documents, we asked Towns to prioritise three aspects of Levelling Up.

For the Towns involved, community pride in place and culture and heritage rated highest – although jobs and opportunities also held clear importance.

We also wanted to understand Towns biggest challenges to delivering Levelling Up.

We asked Towns about the key issues you’re talking to us about regularly.

Towns’ responses reflect a widespread lack of resources – an issue we’re seeing across the board – but timing also came into this. Timing covers a wide range of external factors (including COVID-19) which are affecting Towns’ ability to plan and deliver projects, but it also links to coordination with projects and initiations running alongside this programme, at both local and central levels.

Finally, we wanted to know the extent to which communities would recognise the Towns Fund, and specifically the projects Towns are delivering, as part of the Levelling Up agenda.

We asked Towns to put community on a 1-5 scale with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 5 being ‘completely’.

With most votes suggesting a widespread lack of awareness about the link between the Towns Fund and the Levelling Up agenda, there is a clear need to communicate more thoroughly about how wider government agendas manifest ‘on the ground’.

Questions and answers

Ahead of the webinar, we invited questions on Levelling Up – thank you to the many people who submitted one. Timescales meant DLUHC couldn’t answer each of the questions one by one, so this section groups them into the following themes based on the perceptions and priorities coming out of the interactive session:

• Funding: investment, allocation, and delivery

• Public perceptions of Levelling Up

• Metrics for success

• Net Zero and Levelling Up ambitions

Funding: investment, allocation, and delivery

Your questions included:

-         Investment allocation

-         Who can apply for funding

-         How to manage overruns

-         Changing project scopes

Investment is allocated based on a range of metrics to determine need, particularly those places with higher levels of deprivation. DLUHC takes various qualitative and quantitative indicators including skills, productivity and economic shock or resilience into account.

DLUHC appreciates the difficulties in coordinating delivery, particularly against a backdrop of inflation and limited resource. That’s why they have piloted ‘Single Conversations’ this year. These Town-focused conversations cover multiple Levelling Up funds to help Towns navigate a range of funds and initiatives.

They also know that with changing costs, project scopes may need to change. They have introduced more flexibility in this regard, giving projects the opportunity to make the changes they need to and reallocate of funding as a result, through a Project Adjustment Request.

Note: To help DLUHC to remain as efficient as possible, they asked that Towns submit Project Adjustment Requests are submitted before Business Case summaries. 

Public perceptions of Levelling Up: how the government can instil public faith in and bring meaning to the Levelling Up agenda

With attendees prioritising people and place while also noting low public understanding of Towns Fund as part of Levelling Up, clearly public perspectives are an important area to focus on.

Town Deals are a tangible demonstration of how the Levelling Up agenda brings meaningful change to grass-root communities. We want to support and amplify messages around the need and benefits of your projects to local communities, to bring them on the journey and highlight how high-level government agendas can positively impact their lives.

For more about how the Towns Fund puts the Levelling Up agenda into action, you can read Levelling Up Minister Neil O’Brien’s blog here.

Metrics for success

Your questions included:

-         How the Levelling Up agenda can be measured at both a local and national level

-         What Levelling Up success looks like

There are many ways to measure its success, including the use of a range of surveys and indices to understand the impact of the Levelling Up agenda.

As well as looking at standard statistics around human, financial and institutional capital, wellbeing and non-physical statistics including social capital (measuring connections with others and attitudes and behaviours that indicate a close-knit society) and ‘intangible’ capital (software, data, research and development) are also taken into account.

The Levelling Up agenda is about raising communities across the country up for these metrics, particularly in places of deprivation and places that do not meet the national average.

Net Zero: How the government can use Levelling Up to support NZ ambitions?

Devolution settlements can empower local authorities, potentially enabling them to better lead on Net Zero action.

Levelling Up funds can be used for projects that advance Net Zero as well as economic development, particularly if the Net Zero goals are defined from the start and used to place requirements on private sector partners.

Final thoughts

Thank you to everyone who attended this session. Your engagement provided the chance to open a new dialogue with DLUHC’s Levelling Up leadership. We all enjoyed speaking to so many of you.

As Towns continue the journey to project delivery, DLUHC wanted to emphasise that the door is always open to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback both on this programme and others you are involved with. If you would like to get in touch, please email your CLGU Area Lead.

The Towns Fund Delivery Partner is also here to help until the end of July. We are keen to support you in the ways that are most useful to you, so please get in touch with your Town Coordinator to discuss all the support available.