Rethinking levelling up: Caring for place, empowering connectors, and redesigning our culture of governance

Article

The levelling up agenda has made little progress since its inception in 2019.

Yet abandoning its programme of reform risks returning us to a status quo characterised by over-centralisation and top-down control, that served the country so poorly and paved the way to wide regional divides in the first place.

Against this background, this paper critically assesses the unfinished governance processes of levelling up, challenging the traditional orthodoxy of territorial government in the UK.

We call for a culture of governance that rests on the logic of caring for place, that recognises that participation and a reinvigorated local government go hand in hand, and that supports the work of ‘connectors’ across places and the culture of problem-solving, both within communities and between all tiers of government.

This provocation paper has been commissioned by IPPR and IPPR North as part of its progressive levelling up project. As part of this work, we are convening external thinkers, engaging with members of the public and generating novel policy ideas. Taken together, this work will help design a blueprint to rebalance power, wealth, and opportunity between and within our regions.

Related items

  1. Man Writing Code on Desktop Computer With Multiple Monitors Set Up and a Laptop in Creative Office

    Bottleneck Britain: How digital competition could power UK growth and sovereignty

    Artificial intelligence could be the UK’s biggest economic opportunity in a generation, but only if its gains are spread across the economy rather than pooled within a handful of companies.
  2. A photograph of the UK houses of parliament in Westminster, with a background of pound coins

    Taxing times: Policies, politics, and principles

    This paper sets out proposals for the path to a better tax system, which is able to meet the demands of both the public and a more dangerous world.

  3. Towards a Communities Agenda 2.0

    Andy Burnham’s arrival in Downing Street creates an opportunity to go much further on the communities agenda than we’ve seen up to now. So what should more ambition look like in practice?