LEVELLING UP ...DONE FROM DOWN SOUTH
Anger as most staff in London
BORIS Johnson’s drive to help the country’s poorest areas was branded a joke as 66% of the staff are based in London.
The Levelling Up department is supposed to spread “opportunity and prosperity around the UK”.
But 2,261 out of its 3,436 jobs are based in the capital.
A small minority are in the most deprived regions – 3% in the North East, 5.6% in the North West, and 3.5% in Yorkshire and Humber.
Only 2.4% – 82 people – work for the department in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.
The Local Government Resilience and Communities team that oversees councils is even more London-based, with 70% of staff in the capital. Only 0.3% are in Wales and 0.4% in Scotland. Labour’s Lisa Nandy, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, said of the figures, revealed in a Freedom of Information request:
“This is an absolute joke.”
It comes after the Department of Work and Pensions axed 41 offices including in Blackburn, Bradford and Stockton-on-Tees.
Wigan MP Ms Nandy added: “The Tories have closed dozens of work and pensions offices affecting thousands of jobs. Meanwhile the ministers and officials who are supposed to be ‘levelling up’ around the country are sitting behind a desk in Whitehall.
“A Labour government will smash up this centralisation. We will give power back to the communities.”
Rosie Lockwood, of think tank IPPR North and Scotland, said: “Whitehall must let go of power and resources, and pass them to leaders across the country to level up from the bottom up”.
A Government spokesperson said: “We’re making thousands of jobs available outside of London, including through our economic campus in Darlington, a new government hub in Manchester, and the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ own headquarters in Wolverhampton.”