Of all the announcements that turned heads during the Prime Minister's recent reshuffle, Michael Gove's move from the Cabinet Office to an expanded behemoth of a ministry – the newly-dubbed (but not particularly catchy) Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – perhaps drew the most attention from pundits.

This latest incarnation of the department, and its second rebrand within just four years, sees a beefed-up team of ministers tasked with overseeing not just its core pillars of housing and local government, but also two key tenets of the Prime Minister's pitch to voters: a pledge to tackle regional inequality through the much-discussed programme of levelling up, and a commitment to strengthen the union and protect the integrity of the UK.