Poorer parts of the country would lose hundreds of millions of pounds of funding if the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) is scrapped to pay for a new National Service scheme, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned.

Introduced to replace the EU regional economic development funding following Brexit, the £1.5bn UKSPF is the main formula-based and flexible source of levelling up funding targeted at economically disadvantaged areas.