It used the white paper to set 12 targets linked to policy objectives, promising to focus on areas such as skills, living standards and transport infrastructure.

While Shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy has written to Michael Gove demanding to know where the annual report on progress is - you need only ask the people on the ground to know what progress has been like.

At best the Levelling Up agenda has progressed at a glacial pace. At worst it has become a vehicle for the Government to bribe voters.

The annual report should provide more information to local leaders as to what levelling up hasn’t delivered though.

Looking at all 12 key targets, there is no way that the Government can say it has made any meaningful progress on levelling up.

Instead, local leaders are becoming exasperated at the roadblocks in the way of genuine rebalancing of the economy.

More worryingly for the Government, it is increasingly being seen as a unicorn policy by voters, a concept that only exists in the minds of the Government.

A senior local politician described how the current approach of pitting different areas of the country against one another has created an environment of casino politics, leading to local authorities having to spend money to bid against one another over pockets of funding.

This piecemeal approach is a serious inhibitor to progress and is wasteful in terms of human resource and money.

It leaves local authorities gambling with public money to win prizes.

Flawed approach to levelling up is undermining the policy - The Yorkshire Post says