‘Sums don’t add up in Levelling Up agenda’
MY visionary late head teacher Mr ES Kelly enjoyed teaching us maths. He was passionate about his subject, demanded high standards from all his students, and was insistent that fair-mindedness, objectivity and accuracy were at the heart of the school curriculum he oversaw.
I wonder what he would have made of the current debate about ‘Levelling Up ’?
The mathematics of it just don’t add up. Between 2010, when the Conservative-led coalition government was voted in, and 2020, local government spending was cut by some
37 per cent – approximately
£16 billion. In 2019 the Local Government Association calculated councils had lost 60p out of every pound previously received.
Austerity on this scale has long-term consequences. For example, you can’t cut back on those local public health services which prevent drug and alcohol abuse without leading to a spike in mental health and homelessness problems.
Less money to pay for adult and children’s care and youth services creates family breakdown too. The list goes on and on.
Lower down the list are the cavernous potholes on the pavements which no amount of reporting gets repaired and the flooding risk from gullies that used to be regularly maintained. Everyone will have their own example of a service that ‘used to be ‘.
What’s more, cuts to local services have been dwarfed by cuts to investment in infrastructure spending. When Labour took over in 1997 such was the dilapidation of public buildings – leaking classrooms, unfit council houses and NHS buildings - that new money had to be found.
All schools – not just one or two – in Stoke-on-trent needed upgrading. Accordingly all city schools were rebuilt or refurbished.
A similar pattern followed with our three local hospitals. The city’s council housing stock all benefited from the newly introduced Decent Homes Standard.
Young and old alike benefited from money to train the extra teachers and medics who would transform education and healthcare.
Much of that spending was wiped out in the name of austerity. Just last week the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) showed that the most disadvantaged secondary schools suffered the biggest cuts in real terms spending per pupil between 2010 and 2019 compared to the least deprived schools.
Plain maths would suggest that the way schools are now funded is making the situation worse going forward and is compounding the disadvantage.
So when it comes to the mathematics of Levelling Up, I can’t understand how the £56 million new money for Stokeon-trent is seen as a massive gain and proof that things are on the up. It is, of course, welcome but it does not even begin to make up for the funding that has been cut over the last 11 years. The Government can hardly expect to be congratulated for giving back such a small part of what it has taken away.
That said, the key to our immediate future rests with the policies that are about to come out of Michael Gove’s newly created Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Let’s hope he gets his sums right.
Which is why there is keen interest and a desire to influence the Government’s soon to be published response to the Planning White Paper that will set the framework for the scale and quality of future investment up to 2040 which our local councils are currently working on.
It remains to be seen whether this long overdue paper and the policies that will follow will help or hinder local councils seeking to ‘level up’ at the same time as designing local and neighbourhood plans to hopefully create safe, green and healthy communities, affordable housing and new jobs.
Another aspect of the ministry’s work will be setting transparent criteria for allocating funds to where they are most needed. That requires our councils to work with local people and business to bid for funding that will benefit all our local towns and communities and not just some.
I say ‘all’ advisedly. The city council’s current exclusion of Burslem from its previous Levelling Up application is simply unjustifiable and unfair. Community groups in Burslem care about the Mother Town.
They want to see it prosper again with its historic town centre put to new uses alongside a thriving Port Vale at the heart of the community.
They want to collaborate with council, government and private investors so that both incomers to new housing developments and long-standing residents can take pride in the place where they belong.
As Michael Gove considers his new role it remains to be seen whether he can apply some of the basic mathematics, logic and fairness of the kind Mr Kelly taught us.
Without it Levelling Up will remain at best a few standalone – albeit worthwhile – projects, and at worse, another empty slogan and a lost opportunity.