‘Community power’ needed to drive forward levelling up, says Locality

The Levelling Up White Paper could be the start of redressing inequalities in our country, but community power is needed to drive it forward, according to Locality.

The White Paper sets out 12 new national missions, which the government aims to achieve by 2030, including delivering a rise in pay, employment and productivity in every area of the UK, improving local public transport to be closer to the standards of London, increasing the number of first-time buyers in all areas and securing devolution deals for every part of England that wants one.

Tony Armstrong, Chief Executive of Locality, said: ‘This long overdue White Paper could be the start of redressing our country’s deep inequalities – but needs community power to drive it forward. For decades the potential which resides in every local community has been broadly overlooked, and power has been centralised. And that is a big part of the reason why there are such huge disparities of wealth, health and wellbeing in different areas of the country.

‘The White Paper sets out a useful long-term framework and several of the measures announced today have the potential to put communities in charge of tackling entrenched divides. Government has listened to many of the ideas put forward by the community sector on issues like community ownership and neighbourhood governance. To be a long term success, this power of community needs to be front and centre of the government’s levelling up strategy.

‘Too often, Government interventions over the last few decades have seen pots of money dedicated to tackle regional inequality, which have a positive but temporary impact. We need long lasting change to build local power and decision making to support local economies. We can’t rely on special one-off funding pots controlled by Whitehall if we want a real and sustained reduction of economic inequality.’

In related news, the Levelling Up White Paper needs more detail on how the missions will be achieved in practise, says economic leaders.

Photo by mauro mora