An initial view

Genuine levelling up through world-class R&D and production: the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, part of one of the UK’s best-ever brownfield redevelopments (Waverley)

Huge thanks to the tour de force that is Simon Ricketts for inviting Iain Thomson onto his Clubhouse podcast with Catriona Riddell and Victoria Hutton to talk through the Government’s recently published (and eagerly awaited) Levelling Up White Paper.

You can listen to Iain’s views at https://lnkd.in/dQdsMz5k.

There have been an awful lot of words already written about the White Paper to add to its considerable 332 pages. Our view is that:

– Most of the twelve areas of focus make sense as a guiding principle for law, policy and investment. Productivity ought to have its own priority though and decarbonisation is notable by its absence, particularly when a number of local areas are already championing net-zero technology development.

– Additional Research & Development investment is very welcome, but the UK needs to invest far more in it as it continues to lag behind a number of other European countries. Creating the likes of the AMP in Rotherham takes time, money and above all patience but the effort is entirely worth it to create the lifeblood of our future economy.

– Further opening the LGPS to invest in regeneration is an extremely welcome step and the Government should be applauded for extending this mandate.

– Aside from this, there isn’t a great deal of new policy or investment within it. The paper is a useful reference document for what is already going on or planned in each region (and a reintroduction of Government-backed performance measures we thought we’d left in the noughties!) but the paper does not provide the ‘new model of government and governance of the UK’ that its foreword espouses.

– Finally, the paper does signal an intention to boost regional devolution structures, referring to both new planned Mayoral areas and an extension of the powers enjoyed by the West Midlands and Greater Manchester. Here is the rub however – on whose terms is devolution on? If it is solely a case of the Government providing regions with money to work on centrally-deigned programmes with precise strictures, this is not devolution at all. We’ve heard a number of stories of devolved monies not being able to be spent due to the conditions tied to them; if this is addressed through the eventual Levelling Up & Devolution Bill and local leaders are empowered to do what they believe to be best for their area, it would be a major step forward.

You can find the White Paper here.