The Levelling Up White Paper

Last week, the government published the long-awaited Levelling Up White Paper - a plan to ‘transform the UK by spreading opportunity and prosperity to all parts of it’. The paper outlines 12 missions that the government hopes to achieve by 2030, which cover everything from homes, transport and broadband to education, employment and skills, life expectancy and wellbeing, crime, community and culture.

 

How will Levelling Up affect charities and community organisations?

Much of the funding outlined in the 300 page white paper is already earmarked so there isn’t a lot of new money available. Civil Society has published an outline of the key parts of the paper affecting charities and community organisations. These include:

  • The UK Shared Prosperity Fund, worth over £2.6 billion over two years will be used to support the government’s wider commitments to
    • Boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards
    • Spread opportunities and improve public services
    • Restore a sense of community, local pride and belonging
    • Empower local leaders and communities

Charity Finance Group has raised concerns that this falls short of the amount of funding from the ESiF and the funding for people and skills will not begin until 2024/5.

  • £44 million will be available through the Dormant Assets scheme including:
    • £20 million for The Youth Futures Foundation to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into employment
    • £20 million for Access – The Foundation for Social Investment to fund over 1,000 charities and social enterprises
    • £4 million for Fair4All Finance to accelerate their work on affordable consolidation loans
  • A public consultation on £880 million in Dormant Assets funding will consider a Community Wealth Fund, financial inclusion and other social investment
  • £2 billion Culture Recovery Fund is supporting museums, theatres, cinemas and heritage organisations
  • £150 million Community Ownership Fund

The paper also outlines plans for a £560 million National Youth Guarantee – a commitment for all young people to be able to access out of school activities and volunteering by 2025. Plans for 300 refurbished youth facilities aim to deliver 45,000 additional youth activities every year. The National Citizen Service will be reformed and Duke of Edinburgh will be offered at every state school. There is £4 million for the #iwill fund to increase volunteering opportunities and plans to expand The Cadets.

NCVO have also raised concerns around funding: "While there is much to welcome in the white paper, it’s hard to see how entrenched inequalities will be reversed without significant, sustained long term funding."  Read NCVO's response to the white paper

 

Devolution Framework

A review of neighbourhood governance will look at making it ‘easier for local people and community groups to come together, set local priorities and shape the future of their neighbourhoods’.

The paper outlines plans for ‘a devolution revolution’ introducing a model for counties with mayors or governors. Devolution deals with the West Midlands and Greater Manchester combined authorities will act as a blueprint for other mayoral combined authorities to follow. There will be an expanded Mayoral Combined Authority deal for the North East and the £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund will be decentralised to local leaders as far as possible.

Tony Armstrong, Chief Executive of Locality stressed that “up until now devolution has not managed to spread out of combined authorities into our neighbourhoods. The plans for a review of neighbourhood governance could start to change that. We believe strong local governance institutions at the neighbourhood level are important to ensure power ‘sticks’ and local people have real control over the things that matter to their places.” Read Locality’s response to the white paper

 

The North East

The Levelling Up White Paper highlights some of the huge inequalities faced by people living in the North East.

The median weekly pay in the North East of England is around £150 less than many parts of Greater London – the North East at -8.21% compared to the UK average and London at +21.59% the UK average.

The North East is also the lowest performing region when analysing skills and qualifications, and most worrying, the lowest performing region for life expectancy at -3.5 years and -4.2 years for men and women compared to the UK average.

 

Commenting on the announcements in the Levelling Up White Paper, Lisa Goodwin, Connected Voice Chief Executive said “The announcements in this paper are disappointing for us in the voluntary and community sector – especially given the fact we have been waiting for so long on details for UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It now appears that, despite the promises, UKSPF will not fully replace EU funding, and neither will it target the more deprived communities. I welcome the commitments to greater devolution, because money and decision making coming to a more local level is a good thing for our sector, but at this point we don’t really know how this would work with our current combined authority North of Tyne.”