What levelling up will mean for Yorkshire and my home town of Huddersfield – Neil O’Brien

Yorkshire has massive strengths, right across the county, but for decades governments haven’t made the most of those opportunities.

Levelling up risks becoming levelling down the North – The Yorkshire Post says

But we need to rebalance. Historically, the scales have tipped in favour of London and the South East.

Opportunity must be spread more equally so that communities that have been overlooked or left behind are brought right up to the level of more prosperous areas.

To meet this ambition we need to make bold strides. The Yorkshire Post has been a tireless campaigner for a fairer deal and for devolution, so I am delighted to let its readers know that, as part of the Levelling Up White Paper published this week, we have announced the biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster in modern times.

We have already devolved power to South and West Yorkshire – now we announce plans to finish the job and devolve power from Westminster to the East Riding and Hull, and North Yorkshire and York.

That will spread the benefits of devolution to all of Yorkshire and give local leaders more control which could include moving towards a London-style transport system to better connect people, better buses, boosting local skills, or being able to respond more flexibly to the needs of their communities.

This will be supported by the £830m investment to West Yorkshire Combined Authority and £570m to South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority to transform local transport in the next five years.

This recognises that no two areas are the same. The communities that make up Yorkshire are individual and distinct, with their own history, culture, challenges and pressures.

Redistributing power to the people who know their communities best will drive improvements that will last for generations.

Education and skills is also at the heart of levelling up and investing in people is core to the mission of this government.

Communities across Yorkshire are set to benefit from improved schools, alongside measures that will boost take-up of high-quality training and support families to help children succeed. 

We have identified 55 areas of the country where schools are most in need of improvement , including in Bradford, Doncaster, Kirklees, Leeds, North Yorkshire, Rotherham and Wakefield.

We are backing schools across Yorkshire and the Humber with £251m in extra funding, an increase of nearly six per cent per pupil.

We have also established the Yorkshire and Humber Institute of Technology, covering the Hull and East Riding and York and North Yorkshire LEP areas, and one further Institute of Technology is in development, the DN Colleges Group, covering the Sheffield City Region LEP area.

These institutions will help increase the number apprenticeships in Yorkshire 
and the Humber, building on 
the 36,520 that were started last year.

West Yorkshire will also be given a share of £120m of funding to transform derelict brownfield sites into vibrant places where people want to live and work, while Sheffield will be one of 20 places to benefit from new regeneration opportunities.

This will ensure the talented people that are nurtured locally will want to remain in Yorkshire and also attract others to come to make a life in the county.

Our £1.8bn new national brownfield fund will be used to drive urban regeneration across Yorkshire – and we will drive forward 20 major regeneration projects that both regenerate urban areas and so protect our green fields from sprawl and overdevelopment.

Government research and development spending has become more concentrated over time in Oxford, Cambridge and London.

The White Paper sets out how we will change that: we will grow R&D spending by a third outside the greater south east over the next three years alone – so that we can use it to grow new industries and more high tech, high pay jobs in Yorkshire.

The publication of the Levelling Up White Paper is our masterplan for putting right the geographical inequalities that exist and radically improving the United Kingdom.

By levelling up, we will make life in Yorkshire better, and in doing so, grow the economy 
and ensure we flourish as a country. 

Neil O’Brien is the Levelling Up Minister and a Tory MP. He was born in Huddersfield.

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