Labour drops Conservatives’ levelling up agenda

The Labour Party has removed the words ‘levelling up’ from the government department responsible for local authorities.

The department, now headed up by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner following last week’s general election, will return to its former name – the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – after it was renamed the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities under the Conservative government in September 2021.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast earlier today (9 July), Local Government Minister Jim McMahon confirmed the levelling up phrase has been “firmly tippexed out of the department”.

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“It is a reshaping of the department. It is a refocus, but frankly it is also just grown up politics,” said McMahon, MP for Oldham West and Royton.

Rayner then confirmed the move on X, writing: “No more gimmicks and slogans, but the hard yards of governing in the national interest”.

The levelling up concept was a key component of Boris Johnson’s 2019 leadership campaign. Its greatest impact on the arts and culture sector came via the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund, which was first announced in 2020. The fund ranked all local authorities into three tiers by need and had designated an estimated £1.1bn to cultural projects after the final funding round was delivered last November.

But critics of the fund raised issues around its central management, the pitting of local communities against one another through competitive bidding processes and insufficient funds to support all areas in need.

The levelling up agenda also received criticism from within the sector, on issues including the impact on underinvested areas and its failure to address issues such as social mobility in the arts.

Impact on culture

A renewed focus on local authorities may indicate that the Labour government is set to give more decision making power to local communities.

New Prime Minister Keir Starmer first revealed plans to devolve decisions on culture – as well as employment support, transport, energy, climate change, housing and childcare provision – to local authorities back in January 2023.

Labour’s 2024 manifesto also pledged to transfer power out of Westminster and into communities, promising “landmark devolution legislation to take back control”.

Speaking on ITV's political discussion show Peston yesterday (8 July) evening, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Labour MP for Peckham, shared further detail on Labour’s plans for “big devolution”. 

“We’ve talked about local growth plans, which will allow places to set the strategy – what you want your place to look like, to work with businesses, work with key stakeholders, work with your communities to set that – and then central government will give you the powers to do that,” she said.

“Under the last government, we had these crazy bidding wars where places would have to come in and put in a bidding pot for a little bit of money that wasn’t necessarily strategic. We will give you multi-year budgets based around that plan with the flexibility over multiple years.”

Fahnbulleh’s comments mirror plans outlined in Labour’s manifesto, which pledged to “give councils multi-year funding settlements and end wasteful competitive bidding”. 

Conservative peer Eric Pickles, who served as Communities and Local Government Secretary between 2010 and 2015, appeared to agree with Labour’s plans for more devolution during the Peston show. 

“I actually agree. I thought the top slicing, the bidding thing was absolutely absurd and it's better to devolve the whole lot and the power locally,” he said.