The Government has finally published the model it used to prioritise cash allocations from its levelling up fund after criticism from the official statistics watchdog.
Officials from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) quietly published the model on its website last week.
The publication came three months after the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) scolded the Government for failing to publish the data behind its selection of priority areas for the fund.
In a letter in August, the OSR publicly called to account senior civil servant Sandra Tudor, who is head of data, analysis and statistics at DLUHC.
The watchdog had told Ms Tudor that from the methodology and data publicly available it was ‘still not possible to recreate’ the full dataset used to allocate local authorities to priority areas.
It said publication of the data would ‘enhance public confidence in the decisions that have been made and the organisations making them’.
Director general for regulation at the OSR, Ed Humpherson, wrote: ‘It is our expectation that data to support key decisions should be published in a clear and accessible form with appropriate explanations of context and sources.’
The MJ understands that the DLUHC will highlight the model in a written response to OSR.