Inquiry needed into murky Levelling Up 'Hunger Games' fight for funding: Jayne Dowle

Angry MPs, from both sides of the House, are apparently haranguing ministers to complain that their communities have been - literally - left behind. And nowhere are voices more strident than Yorkshire and the Humber, where just six projects have received financial backing.

With a population of more than 5.5m, major cities requiring infrastructure upgrades and countless towns and villages left out in the cold, our region received the second lowest amount of Levelling Up funding per capita after London.

Indeed, we’re receiving half the money handed out to the Tory-dominated South East shires.

Out of just six successful projects in our region - and this total seems to include a £18m regeneration of the seaside resort of Cleethorpes, North East Lincolnshire – one is even in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s own constituency of Richmondshire. How blatant is that?

Major improvements to Catterick town centre might be welcome for locals, but surely £19m to spend on new walking and cycling routes, a town square, and a “new community facility” and community kitchen, is a kick in the teeth for more beleaguered boroughs, such as Rotherham.

They asked for £20m to create a new mixed-use development in Wath town centre, and to improve the high street and market in the town of Dinnington, where ‘clearing the burnt out buildings’ is on the priority list.

Barnsley, where I live, has been one of the few fortunate places in Yorkshire and the Humber to benefit from these government alms, supposedly promised to even out the shocking chasms of social deprivation, poverty and economic blight cutting the UK into pieces.

I’ll manage a small round of applause. We’ve been awarded £10m to fund a new outdoor activity park, revamp a youth centre and set up NAVE (The Northern Academy for Vocal Excellence) in the former Courthouse, a veritable achievement, thanks to the lobbying of Barnsley Youth Choir, currently ranked 5th in the Interkultur World Rankings - the highest ranked choir from Great Britain.

Part of this £10m will also go towards revamping The Civic, another town centre arts venue. Over the years this Victorian building has had millions of pounds of public money thrown at it. It will be interesting to see exactly what this latest injection of cash will add to what it offers the community, some of whom can’t even afford the bus fare into town.

I’d put all of Barnsley’s approved projects on the ‘nice to have’ list, rather than ‘needs urgent attention’.

Nandy is also right when she says that paltry sums are being thrown as grudging lifelines to replace services cut to the bone by the Conservatives, and pointed in the wrong direction even then.

For instance, the major city of Sheffield is reeling from two knock backs. Sheffield City Council submitted a bid of more than £19m to revive Parkwood Springs – including the site of the old ski village – into a new country park, and a bid of more than £17m for improvements to community facilities in the deprived area of Heeley, including re-opening a school and creating a health centre. No dice, said the adjudicators.

Yet in London, Colindale and Leyton Underground stations are about to get £43m to pay for new step-free access, “improving two pockets of socio-economic deprivation in the capital”, according to the government.

Like Sheffield, it’s the same story in Leeds - surely a fulcrum of any so-called levelling up programme - which submitted six bids totalling £120m. Do those in charge of making these crucial decisions not understand anything about the world outside of Westminster?

Perhaps they might point to the agreed sum of more than £41 million for West Yorkshire to improve bus services and roads. But as Nandy says, such hand-outs would not be necessary if there had not been already years of Tory under-investment.

At this stage, it’s not clear what levels of public scrutiny and accountability the decision-making process behind the Levelling Up Fund comes under. If I was a Labour MP – or a Conservative one representing a constituency in a less-than-leafy part of the UK – I would be calling for a full inquiry now, before the next round brings even more bloodshed.