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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The levelling up myth

As a sound bite, levelling up was effective rhetoric, but the reality has hardly lived up to the hype. Although the UK Government is highly centralised anyway, you would have thought they could have made an effort to redress that issue in designing a department aimed at raising up the wealth of regions in the north of England. Alas, that was not the case.

The Mirror reports that 66% of Tory Levelling Up staff are based in London, only 2.4% – 82 people – work for the department in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined despite the government's department's mission to spread “opportunity and prosperity around the UK”

The paper says that 2,261 out of its 3,436 jobs are based in the capital:

A small minority are in the most deprived regions – 3% in the North East, 5.6% in the North West, and 3.5% in Yorkshire and Humber.

Only 2.4% – 82 people – work for the department in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.

The Local Government Resilience and Communities team that oversees councils is even more London-based, with 70% of staff in the capital.

On top of all this the Department of Work and Pensions has axed 41 offices including in Blackburn, Bradford and Stockton-on-Tees. Must do better.
Comments:
Thet will say whatever is 'electable' but do the complete different in practice.
 
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