The government will fail to accelerate the transition to net zero without the devolution of funding and additional resources to boost local authority capacity, city leaders have warned.
The government’s flagship ‘levelling up’ policy has so far not effectively funded some of the country’s most deprived areas because of tensions within its approach, a group of researchers has said.
Senior ministers have defended the allocation of regeneration funds, amid concerns that projects in the southeast and London received preferential treatment.
Councils will struggle to meet their net-zero goals because the funding model is too short-term, experts have warned as some authorities begin scaling back their ambitions.
Ministers should consider scrapping the final round of the Levelling up Fund and use the money to provide funding to current projects that risk being cut because of inflation, an expert has told MPs.
The “inefficient” competitive bidding processes for transport funding should be replaced with a block grant system to ensure improvements are made, a House of Lords Committee has said.
The portal to submit bids for part two of the Levelling up Fund will go live in the coming days following a month-long delay, a senior civil servant has said.
The lack of clarity over ministerial involvement in approving Levelling Up Fund bids has been branded “unsatisfactory” by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.
More than a quarter of the most deprived authorities in England had bids rejected for funding from the government’s Levelling Up Fund, according to reports.
A lack of tax raising powers for devolved authorities in the ‘levelling up’ white paper means local areas will lack the resources needed to transform local economies, according to one local...
The government lacks evidence on whether billions of pounds of funding over the last decade supporting local growth has had the intended impacts, according to the National Audit Office.
Bolton Council has revealed that its application for £16m from the Levelling up Fund – which was not granted by Whitehall – was submitted late due to the documents being too...
