The Levelling Up duty to engage

Where and what exactly is it?

This week, around 200 Councils are putting finishing touches to the second round of bids for the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund. In Scotland, Moray Council is hoping for £18.9m for Elgin Town Centre. In the North-West, £10m may pay for improvements to Leigh Civic Centre. In the South-West, Mid-Devon, which failed to obtain funding for the Collumpton Relief Road, hope for better luck this time around. They hope to replace eyesores and redevelop a car park in Harwich; in Great Yarmouth, they want to invest in the North Quay area. Sadly, in Hastings they have accepted that compliant projects won’t be ready this time around and they will defer their bid to Round Three. If there is one.

All these and so many other aspirations will be sent to the Department of Levelling Up ready for the August 2 deadline – itself postponed due to problems with the complexities of the online bidding portal. It is a formidable process, lubricated by grants of up to £125,000 to support bidders in their preparatory activities.

Part of the instructions reads as follows:

Describe what engagement you have undertaken with local relevant stakeholders, including the community (the public, civic society, private sector and local businesses). How has this informed your bid and what support do you have from them?

Just in case local authorities have any doubts, the Department helpfully adds:-

Whilst there is no pre-defined list, potential relevant local stakeholders and partners may include:

• Elected representatives of Local Government (i.e., Democratic decision-making process of the Local Authority, Cabinet Decisions etc.)
• Local businesses
• Local Enterprise Partnerships
• Public transport providers
• Police and emergency services
• Community representatives / groups
• Government bodies / organisations e.g., Historic England, Arts Council
• Environmental representatives
• Public health representatives
• Universities, and further education colleges
• Audience, visitors, spectators and participants

Scour reports of Council submissions as reported across the country this week and look specifically for evidence of public engagement and consultation and the best one can conclude is that it is patchy. Some have undoubtedly consulted. This especially goes for ‘shovel-ready’ projects which have gone through a planning process or for neighbourhood renewal programmes which see the Levelling Up Fund as a way to afford projects that Councils themselves have struggled to implement. No doubt they will all claim comprehensive and effective local engagement – but how genuine is this? And does it matter?

From first principles, it’s a good idea to secure public support for changes to the ‘look and feel’ of local places, the infrastructure and socio-economic dynamic. In well-functioning communities, it happens through a mixture of bottom-up creativity and campaigning and top-down municipal leadership. Renewal and regeneration have happened in this way for decades. The Levelling Up analysis rightly claims that there are places where this hasn’t happened, or even where it did occur, it has not been on a scale that outweighs the multiple deprivations that have held back the locality. There is a suggestion that the level and intensity of public involvement may well be a factor.

The theory therefore is that the prospect of substantial grants should galvanise Councils and their ‘stakeholders’ into constructive and participative problem-solving at scale. Maybe it has in places, but the kind of projects that are currently emerging seem mostly to be from a list of schemes that have long languished on the desks of Authorities too cash-strapped to proceed.

A failure to excite more public engagement is also the result of other factors:-

• The sums of money – at an average of about £16m each – are relatively modest; hardly enough to make a substantial difference
• The proliferation of schemes and funding sources which includes the Towns Fund, (£3.6bn announced in 2019), the Community Renewal Fund, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (replacing EU Structural funds) as well as the Levelling Up Fund
• Some of the largesse has become politically controversial and tainted by a Select Committee’s conclusion that allocations of comparable Towns Fund funding were biased in favour of Government-supporting constituencies
• Continuing uncertainty about the true meaning of Levelling Up and doubts as to whether this was wholeheartedly supported by a Boris Johnson cabinet distracted by internal dissent
• Lack of joined-up thinking with net-zero initiatives and the desire of ‘climate emergency’ minded Councils to embark on far more comprehensive re-engineering of their housing, travel and environmental infrastructures

None of this should discourage active communities from organising and from Councils to provide space (physical, online, policy and political) to legitimise the discourse. Of course, we lament the relative lack of effective standards for public dialogue of the kind we require. But for major schemes, here in the UK we have the benefit of legally-enforceable public consultation rules, and excellent advice and guidance for those who need to run such exercises.

In the meantime, the August deadline is just another bureaucratic milestone along what should be a continuous engagement process existing in every city, town or community. And it should not be discretionary. In 2008, there was a half-hearted attempt to introduce a ‘duty to involve’ in England, but this was swiftly repealed by Eric Pickles and the Coalition Government Maybe it is time to revive such a concept and ensure meaningful engagement takes place, instead of just relying on Paragraph 4.2.1 (p18 of 49) of the Guidance in support of the Levelling Up application form!

TRIGGER POINTS

a. The Levelling-up Application Guidance can be viewed here

b. A House of Commons Library research briefing on Local growth funds was published on 15th July 2022. View it here

c. The full 332-page Levelling Up White Paper was published on February 2 2022 and is available here

d A good summary of the Government’s Levelling Up proposals and reactions to it can be found in a House of Commons Library research briefing

e. Read Stephen Hill’s analysis of the White Paper’s references to consultation in his reaction piece in February – here

f. For Councils and communities seriously wishing to engage and consult effectively, the Institute offers a range of assistance from training to Advice/Guidance and Quality Assurance. For an informal discussion, contact Karen Fourie at hello@consultationinstitute.org or call the Institute office on 01767 318350

This is the 379th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement