Fifth Report - Local economic growth
Select Committee
Public Accounts Committee
HC 252
8 June 2022
Recommendations
5 results
4
Acknowledged
There remains considerable uncertainty for Local Authorities around funding, structures and responsibilities for local economic...
Recommendation
There remains considerable uncertainty for Local Authorities around funding, structures and responsibilities for local economic growth. The Department extols the virtues of local plans for coordinating and achieving value for money from central government funding. However local authorities’ attempts at …
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Government Response Summary
The government recognises the local growth funding landscape has been complex and fragmented, and will set out a plan for streamlining the funding landscape this year; a new Levelling Up Cabinet Committee has also been established.
HM Treasury
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6
Acknowledged
Accountability for levelling up outcomes remains unsatisfactory.
Recommendation
Accountability for levelling up outcomes remains unsatisfactory. This Committee has reported before that government’s accountability arrangements had failed to keep pace with increasingly complex ways of delivering policies and services. and that this had weakened accountability to Parliament for the …
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Government Response Summary
The department has implemented a new architecture across central government to support delivery including the Levelling Up Cabinet Sub-Committee and will write to the Committee separately with further details once arrangements have been confirmed with new ministers.
HM Treasury
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7
Acknowledged
The Department does not yet know how it will measure performance on a consistent basis...
Recommendation
The Department does not yet know how it will measure performance on a consistent basis across different geographical areas and timescales. We are concerned that data availability and quality is not yet adequate to track progress against the Levelling Up …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation but disagrees with the conclusion on which it is based, and describes the role of the Spatial Data Unit and ONS in measuring progress against levelling up missions.
HM Treasury
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23
Acknowledged
The Department has been considering an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework for local growth to...
Recommendation
The Department has been considering an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework for local growth to include common objectives and outcomes, within which individual programme-level frameworks would sit. This would enable it to compare the relative effectiveness of similar initiatives and …
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Government Response Summary
The department agrees with the recommendation and will continue to fill evidence gaps through engagement and learning from evaluations; processes to feed evaluation findings into local growth activity and wider levelling up agenda is at the design stage.
HM Treasury
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24
Acknowledged
When we asked what success would look like for people in areas where, for example,...
Recommendation
When we asked what success would look like for people in areas where, for example, it is hard to get a job or the High Street is struggling, the Department highlighted the importance of taking a broad definition of growth.71 …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation but disagrees with the conclusion. They will continue to measure progress for most missions consistently, and are undertaking further work to develop those that are exploratory. The Spatial Data Unit will produce indicators, address current data gaps and measure progress.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (9) Observations and findings — click to expand
10
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We asked the Department how the part played by the devolved governments on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund compared to their part in deciding the allocation of the European funds it is replacing. The Department explained that for the European Structural Funds, the Devolved National Governments had been the “managing …
Government Response Summary
The department agrees with the committee's recommendation, but disagrees with the conclusion it is based on and states its priority is delivering effective investment in all parts of the UK and describes existing mechanisms for working with devolved administrations.
11
Conclusion
Acknowledged
The Department reassured us that it was expecting to work very closely with each of the devolved Governments and with the individual local authorities responsible for delivery. We were, however, sceptical about how close past cooperation with devolved Governments had really been and the extent to which it enabled national …
Government Response Summary
The department agrees with the committee's recommendation, but disagrees with the conclusion it is based on and states its priority is delivering effective investment in all parts of the UK and describes existing mechanisms for working with devolved administrations.
19
Conclusion
Acknowledged
This Committee reported in 2016 that government’s accountability arrangements had failed to keep pace with increasingly complex ways of delivering policies and services and that this had weakened accountability to Parliament for the use of public funds.56 Noting the long timescales and magnitude of the delivery challenge, we questioned witnesses …
Government Response Summary
The department has implemented a new architecture across central government to support delivery including the Levelling Up Cabinet Sub-Committee and will write to the Committee separately with further details once arrangements have been confirmed with new ministers.
20
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We heard that a lot of the missions were cross-cutting and would require leadership from several departments while others were more focussed and there would be more of a role for a lead department.59 For example, the Accounting Officer from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy told us …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees, and will implement a new architecture across central government to support delivery, including the Levelling Up Cabinet Sub-Committee. The department and HM Treasury will write to the Committee separately with further details once arrangements are confirmed with new ministers.
21
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We questioned the Department on why, despite billions of pounds spent on it over the years, there was so little evidence on what works for delivering local economic growth, particularly outside London. The Department’s Accounting Officer pointed to the inherent complexity of understanding how local economies grow, and that the …
Government Response Summary
The department agrees with the recommendation and will continue to fill evidence gaps through engagement and learning from evaluations; processes to feed evaluation findings into local growth activity and wider levelling up agenda is at the design stage.
22
Conclusion
Acknowledged
In 2019, this Committee reported that the Department did not understand what impacts its £12 billion Local Growth Fund had had on local economic growth yet had decided not to evaluate it.65 We were encouraged to learn that the Department has now decided to reverse that decision but, as the …
Government Response Summary
The department has a strong understanding of what works for local growth, is filling evidence gaps through engagement and forthcoming evaluations, and has established the Spatial Data Unit.
25
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Two of the missions in the Levelling Up White Paper are ‘overarching’ missions. The first is around living standards and includes measures of productivity, pay and jobs and the second is around measures of well-being.73 With reference to the first, we asked the Department how it intended to measure local …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation but disagrees with the conclusion on which it is based, and describes the role of the Spatial Data Unit and ONS in measuring progress against levelling up missions.
26
Conclusion
Acknowledged
When we asked the Department whether it expected to be able to get this data quickly enough to be able to measure what impact the funds under its levelling-up agenda were having, the Department told us it would be able to make some progress quickly but some of it would …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation but disagrees with the conclusion on which it is based, and describes the role of the Spatial Data Unit and ONS in measuring progress against levelling up missions.
27
Conclusion
Acknowledged
We asked the Department how it intended to pull together all this data to show a big picture, as well as a local picture, to demonstrate the effectiveness of government’s levelling up agenda. The Department told us it had committed to reporting annually on levelling up and its performance against …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation but disagrees with the conclusion on which it is based, and describes the role of the Spatial Data Unit and ONS in measuring progress against levelling up missions.