A large proportion of Government spending is ‘not robustly evaluated' and there is poor understanding by the centre about the approaches to local economic growth that work best, an expert from the National Audit Office has said.

Speaking at an Institute for Government (IfG) event today, chief analyst at the NAO Ruth Kelly said that government ‘really has quite a poor understanding of what works, because its policies haven't been consistently evaluated, despite £18bn spent on local growth initiatives in the 10 years from 2010, so really a huge waste of opportunity'.