Levelling Up White Paper - some thoughts

Yesterday felt a little like a reminiscence day for the regeneration sector. Remember Regional Development Agencies? English Partnerships, the OG brownfield regeneration agency, before it became all about housing delivery and ended up, after several interim acronyms, as Homes England? What about Sure Start? Isn't rural proofing reviving the 2000s approach of the Commission for Rural Communities?

The 90s and 00s revival has spread to politics as Michael Gove's long awaited Levelling Up White Paper looks to a future with a lot of old ideas brought back into play. After an idiotic introduction (someone tell Andy Haldane that Renaissance Florence was a slave-owning society, and the Industrial Revolution hardly reduced inequality), when you delve into the detail it's almost like a junior civil servant at DLUHC found an old filing cabinet full of John Prescott's briefings, and had an epiphany.

The news release came out at 9am but the full White Paper wasn't published till gone 3, so most if the commentary you will have read yesterday was based on the headlines and not the detail. But I ploughed through the entire pack of papers - yes, including the annex on missions and metrics - before 5pm (thus showing of my one and only superpower, speed reading) and have a few observations.

Commentators who point out there's not enough money set out in the paper, to meet the massive ambition of the 12 'missions', are quite correct. The missions also remind me of Gove's education reforms - the man loves to set targets and metrics. The 'list of things', as has been pointed out, feels like they've been rescued from the slush pile and it's clear that Gove hasn't won the battle with Sunak to be able to promise big ticket items. Proposed local government reforms are particularly peculiar as they would add more complexity and bureaucracy, not less - exactly what the regions don't need, and there's no detail about how much power Whitehall will genuinely be happy to devolve (judging by recent track record, not much).

But what is interesting about the White Paper is that it starts with over 150 pages of in-depth analysis about what has gone wrong, why 'levelling up' is needed and, crucially, why this is not a problem that can be solved by one department alone. With hundreds of footnotes, I would love to know whose dissertation this is that's been lifted hook, line and sinker - but the analysis is far from wrong. (And this is certainly a change from the Jenrick era, for which 'intellectually flimsy' would be a massive understatement).

The history of looking holistically at persistent disadvantage is an interesting one. In 1991, census data was used to compile the 1991 Index of Local Conditions - published in 1994, such was the state of data analysis at the time. The then- Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions rejigged the indicators and geographical boundaries into the Index of Local Deprivation in 1998, then the Index of Multiple Deprivation in 2000, and, with tweaks, this has been issued every four or so years since then. The impetus behind creating the IMD was precisely to show the whole systems issue that is persistent disadvantage, and to map this geographically. Each iteration still forms the authoritative benchmark by which to track whether policy has really made any difference on the ground, in people's lives. (For a great insight on how that data can be used, have a look at the Atlas of Inequality.)

However, policy-making has, by and large, stepped away from taking a whole systems, place-based approach since the New Labour years. The White Paper acknowledges the Single Regeneration Budget, the New Deal for Communities, and the Regional Development Agencies - mostly Labour initiatives - as important forerunners, although it stops understandably short of explicitly concluding they were the most effective interventions to have taken place over the last 30 years. Since then, policy has become increasingly thematically silo'd - as the number of civil servants in Whitehall has mushroomed, local government hollowed out by defunding, and the non-departmental public bodies slashed in the 'bonfire of the quangos'. Localgov has been reduced - as the White Paper also points out - to drafting endless bids for funding from different central government departments with little real relationship-building and no joined-up thinking.

If Gove stays around for long enough to see the core of the White Paper thinking through, and if he can wield enough influence over other ministers and departments, which is also far from easy - the real radicalism in the White Paper is that it asks for a major culture shift in the way government works. It is heavily influenced by Mariana Mazucatto's 'missions-oriented policy' concept (another interesting borrowing from a left-wing intellectual) in demanding that all of government reorients towards shared goals and indicators and therefore the cross-silo working that is the only way this can be delivered. Those of us who have been around for a long time can be forgiven our eye-rolling cynicism at whether this will ever happen. But two things potentially stand out here:

Firstly, Gove is a natural reformer, like or loathe him. He has track record in pushing through change - albeit more in the manner of slicing through the Gordian knot than through negotiation. Secondly, the tools at his disposal in 2022 are a long way from 1998. Data gathering and analysis, collaborative working tools, agile pilot projects - all of these are potentially transformational, if they are harnessed to the cause. But he'll need to find allies who share his drive and who are happy to empower people on the ground without the 20th century paperwork demands that currently means half your budget is wasted on project management.

It can be argued that the White Paper doesn't need more money behind it, because it's all about working smarter, not harder; making existing funding add up to more than the sum of the parts, not less. This isn't a terribly voter-friendly proposition as it's about systems and not products, and it certainly doesn't work to electoral cycles - either for central, local or mayoral elections. Timing is not on Gove's side - Labour set up the RDAs and the NDCs within a year of taking office, meaning they could show real results by the time an election came round - we are nearly 3 years into this cycle and he is only just beginning. The regeneration of King's Cross is cited as an exemplar of physical change but that took decades of work by a non-politically aligned body - the Kings Cross Partnership - to deliver on the ground. This is one reason why I think more mayors is potentially barking up the wrong tree. 

To deliver change that will take decades, we need delivery bodies that are free to act without the risk that the rug will be pulled from under them by a change of administration. That's the real lesson of the 150 page analysis - but not one our politicians like to hear.

You can read more of my thoughts on the WP in my piece for the Architect's Journal.