Levelling up

Last month the government finally announced how its replacement for EU regional development funding – the Shared Prosperity Fund – will be allocated across the country.

The Levelling Up White Paper is just the latest of efforts to tackle regional inequalities. What does it tell us about this government’s approach? And how likely is it to succeed where others have failed?

The next few years are likely to be particularly challenging for schools, colleges, universities and nurseries. This event examined how education spending can be best set to support levelling up and narrow inequalities.

At this event, IFS researchers presented the findings of two chapters of the 2020 IFS Green Budget, addressing the big questions around the 2020 Spending Review and ‘levelling up’.

The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the fore increasing concerns about inequalities not only between different population groups – such as the gap between the rich and poor, young and old, and different ethnic groups – but also between people living in different places. Even prior to the crisis though, there was a sense that the UK is not only a highly geographically unequal country, but also an increasingly geographically unequal one.

European Structural and Investment (ESI) funds help to pay for initiatives supporting business development, research and development, investment in digital and green infrastructure, as well skills and training interventions and support for job-seekers. But with the UK having formally departed the European Union, the country will stop receiving new ESI funding at the end of 2020. Thus, for 2021 and beyond, the UK government faces choices over what to replace ESI funding with.