ICE submission to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee on funding for levelling up

This submission discusses the ICE’s views on some of the key challenges regarding the allocation of funding for levelling up, including:

• The need for stronger integration between funding for levelling up and similar funding streams designed to regenerate communities, including the Towns, Future High Streets and Sustainable Transport Funds.
• The issues regarding the lack of alignment between the Levelling Up White Paper and the Net Zero Strategy. Notably that there’s no mention of net zero or other environmental outcomes in any of the 12 levelling up missions, separating net zero and levelling up into two individual problems. Not aligning the two agendas risks missing opportunities to deliver the best outcomes for communities.
• Metrics for measuring progress on levelling up should be geared towards local outcomes to ensure there’s sufficient value for money. There are currently missing and vague metrics for levelling up that, unless addressed, will make it harder to deliver the missions outlined in the 2022 white paper.
• Without knowing how levelling up can be effectively measured and its outcomes addressed through infrastructure interventions, the investment directed towards it could be wasted, as could the opportunity to support delivery of other, complementary objectives such as net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
• The government should give more thought to UK content in net zero industries like offshore wind, to ensure that local communities that host such infrastructure benefit from it.