Latest updates: prime minister to make series of visits across north-east to promote levelling up funding
Good morning. Rishi Sunak has today announced a spending splurge – £2.1bn for more than 100 community projects. It is the second round of awards from the government’s levelling up fund.
In theory, spending announcements are meant to be good news stories for governments. But initiatives like this always trigger complaints about who has been left out, as my colleague Pippa Crerar reports in her overnight story.
The levelling up fund is in chaos, beset by delays and allegations of favouritism. 15 months after the first round of allocations, just 5% of the money has made it to the communities who were promised it. And despite today’s announcement, communities across the country are still paying a Tory premium for the last 13 years.
It takes an extraordinary arrogance to expect us to be grateful for a partial refund on the money they have stripped out of our communities, which has decimated vital local services like childcare, buses and social care.
