Government releases levelling up white paper

The Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove, has today unveiled the government’s White Paper, setting out ‘a plan to transform the UK by spreading opportunity and prosperity to all parts of it.'

The paper highlights the need to transform places and boost local growth by 2030 through strong innovation and a climate conducive to private sector investment, better skills, improved transport systems, greater access to culture, stronger pride in place, deeper trust, greater safety and more resilient institutions.

IOM3 CEO Colin Church CEnv FIMMM said, ‘It is good to see the UK Government define and set out a plan to address the geographical differences across the UK. Skills and infrastructure, in particular, are key enablers for the industries many IOM3 members work in, so providing more support for these in areas of relative disadvantage is welcome.’

Potential points of interest to IOM3 members include the following:

R&D, skills & transport

• By 2030, domestic public investment in R&D outside the Greater South East will increase by at least 40%
• Local public transport connectivity across the country will be significantly closer to the standards of London, with improved services, simpler fares and integrated ticketing
• 3 new Innovation Accelerators, major place-based centres of innovation, centred on Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and Glasgow-City Region
• 200,000 more people completing high-quality skills training annually in England, with an additional 80,000 more people completing courses in low-skilled areas

Education

• Local Skills Improvement Plans, together with supporting funding, will be set up across England to set out the key changes needed in a place to make technical skills training more responsive to skills needs. Nine new Institutes of Technology will be established in England, helping to boost higher technical skills in STEM subjects.

Policy

• Government decision‐making will be fundamentally reoriented to align policies with the agenda with additional resources being deployed to local areas, including moving 22,000 civil servants out of London by 2030.

The Government has outlined its next steps which include setting out further detail on a number of these policy commitments in future publications and introducing legislation to Parliament to underpin these targets.