During the Local Government Association conference a new report from the Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE) together with our research partner CLES (the national organisation for local economic strategies) was released.

While levelling up as a political concept can be contested along party lines, what it really means in addressing the public policy concerns of poverty, inequality, jobs and opportunities alongside health outcomes and life chances, its overarching aims are inarguable. Most local politicians want to make life better for local people and places.

The research, by Leah Millthorne offers some stark findings. One in three of the first-round bids were unsuccessful; one in five of second-round bids met a similar fate. Aside from the wasted resources and shelved schemes, the distribution of funding has been at best lumpy, and it is not the case that the ‘big’ money has gone to those areas one might have expected to gain the most.