Report

Levelling Up the United Kingdom

The UK Government has published its Levelling Up White Paper, setting out a plan to transform the UK by spreading opportunity and prosperity to all parts of it.

At the heart of this new way of making and implementing policy will be 12 national missions – all quantifiable and to be achieved by 2030. These missions are the policy objectives for levelling up, and form the heart of the government’s agenda for the 2020s.

Key points of the new policy regime include the following UK Government ambitions:

  • To set clear and ambitious medium-term missions to provide consistency and clarity over levelling up policy objectives. These will serve as an anchor for policy across government, as well as catalysing innovation and action by the private and civil society sectors. These missions are ambitions that the UK Government has for all parts of the UK. Delivering on them, while being fully respectful of the devolution settlements, will require close and collaborative work with the devolved administrations. The missions are rolling decade-long endeavours and will be reviewed periodically by the UK Government.
  • To create a new regime to oversee its levelling up missions, establishing a statutory duty to publish an annual report analysing progress and a new external Levelling Up Advisory Council. The Council will support Ministers by advising on the design, delivery and impact of levelling up policy. The annual report will update the public on progress against the missions so that levelling up is subject to rigorous external scrutiny, including by Parliament. Former Matrix panellist Cathy Gormley Heenan has been appointed to the Council.
  • To target £100m of investment in three new Innovation Accelerators, private-public-academic partnerships which will aim to replicate the Stanford-Silicon Valley and MIT-Greater Boston models of clustering research excellence and its direct adoption by allied industries. These pilots will be centred on Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Glasgow City-Region.
  • To transform its approach to data and evaluation to improve local decision-making. In the past, it has been difficult to see what is being spent, where and how it is being spent, and its impact. The Office for National Statistics’ Subnational Data Strategy aims to improve the UK’s subnational data, mapping local economic geographies and helping improve transparency and accountability to the public. The UK Government is making available interactive tools and maps to facilitate this process. It will also encourage innovative uses of real-time data at the local level, giving leaders across the UK the information they need to deliver, experiment and evaluate swiftly and effectively.
  • To increase total domestic public R&D investment outside the Greater South East by at least a third over the Spending Review period and at least 40% by 2030, with that additional government funding seeking to leverage at least twice as much private sector investment over the long-term to stimulate innovation and productivity growth.
  • To pursue a new approach to places through Levelling Up Directors. Working with local actors, these roles will have the following objectives:
  1. building local capacity and capability, especially where it is thin;
  2. improving the evidence base for local decision-makers, working with the ONS, and evaluating what works using data, statistics and analysis;
  3. catalysing local change and championing local ideas within government;
  4. bringing strategic coherence, coordination and flexibility to government intervention in places;
  5. forming a key bridge between local actors and central government; and
  6. acting as champions for their places.

Levelling Up Directors will act as a single point of contact for local leaders and a first port of call for new and innovative local policy proposals. They will be based in the areas they have responsibility for, while recognising the different institutional landscapes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Levelling Up Directors will bring together government policy and delivery, aligning decisions and funding to support local and national strategic objectives.