When is a fund not a fund? Exploring the financial support for levelling up

ABSTRACTThis paper will examine the different funding streams associated with the levelling up agenda pursued by the Conservative government elected in the United Kingdom in 2019. It will explore in detail a number of funding streams that this government has associated with levelling up to understand their relationship to the levelling up agenda. The article will also analyse the relationship between the levelling up missions and the funding associated with levelling up. The Levelling Up White Paper released in February 2022 included 12 missions that were intended to provide a ‘targeted, measurable and time-bound objective, or set of objectives, from which a programme of change can then be constructed or catalysed’. The analysis of the funding streams outlined in this paper shows that the relationship with the missions is overall a tangential one. The lack of clarity on what is and is not a levelling up fund, coupled with the loose relationship with the levelling up missions may diminish the impact that the levelling up agenda will have on regional inequality in the UK.KEYWORDS: Levelling uppublic fundingregional inequalitypolicydevolution Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 It has been reported that the UKSPF might not fully cover, however, European Structural Funds (Brien, Citation2022).Additional informationNotes on contributorsGraeme AthertonProfessor Graeme Atherton is head of the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up. Graeme studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Trinity College Oxford and has been working in the field of education research and management since 1995. After 6 years leading Aimhigher work in London, he founded AccessHE and NEON in the UK. He now leads both the Centre for Levelling Up at the University of West London and NEON. Graeme holds Visiting Professorships at Amity University, London and Sunway University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a member of the board of the National Union of Students (NUS) and has produced over 200 conference papers, and publications.Marc Le ChevallierMarc Le Chevallier is a research and policy officer at the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up. Prior to joining CEILUP, Marc completed an undergraduate degree in History and Politics at the University of Exeter and an MSc in Political Theory at the LSE. Previously, he has interned at the Thomas More Institute, finding local ways to regenerate small towns and villages of the ‘France peripherique’. He also worked at the Local Trust, focusing on a campaign to create a new independent endowment – the Community Wealth Fund – to support the most left behind neighbourhoods in England.