The allocation of public spending is one the most direct levers for ‘levelling up’ health, wealth and well-being. But is policy aligned with the government’s stated aims?
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?
"We’ll know we are on the way to levelling up when differences in health and life expectancy across the country start to drop. Sadly, that’s one measure of inequality that has clearly been moving in the wrong direction over the past decade." Paul Johnson writes for The Times on levelling up.
In this briefing note, we update and extend previous IFS analysis, to consider how employment, incomes, benefit claims and council tax payments have evolved over a longer period and have varied geographically, and draw out key implications for local government.
The COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the country – and indeed many other countries. What sets this crisis apart is the many different ways that it is impacting families: while the virus itself is primarily a public health issue, the unprecedented responses it has necessitated mean that this is also very much an economic and a social crisis.
The differences between UK regions are rooted in history going back decades, even centuries. Having fundamental effects on them will require reallocating capital spending for sure, and a whole lot more.
We are in the midst of major changes to local government funding – both its level and the system for raising and distributing it. This note brings together some of the key findings of our research on this topic and highlights where to find further information.
English local government finance is part way through a series of major changes that will see its focus shift from being based on redistribution according to spending needs, towards more emphasis on providing financial incentives to tackle needs and boost local revenue-raising capacity. However, that does not mean that redistribution will cease to play any role in the local government finance system: abolishing it completely would see very large variations in different councils’ ability to fund local services.
The results of the latest business rates revaluation reveal a growing divergence in property prices between London and the rest of the country. Increases in the value of non-residential property in the capital are set to raise rates bills by 11%, on average, increasing the tax take by over £700 million. This will be offset by reductions in bills and revenues in most of the rest of England, and especially the North, as property values fall behind. Growing differences in property prices reflect broader evidence of a growing divergence in economic performance over the last few years. And it will contribute to the ongoing trend of the UK government becoming more and more dependent on revenue from London to fund services across the whole – which may pose difficulties if more revenue sources are devolved to the local level. This observation discusses this and other issues related to today’s revaluation figures.
