Every town and city across the UK has its own challenges and priorities, and Key Cities welcomes the commitment to devolution in the Government’s Levelling Up White Paper to allow a more tailored local response to local issues. Devolution is complex, with no one model working everywhere, and we appreciate that councils will have the choice to take such deals, rather than have them imposed.

Levelling up activity requires money, and we welcome news that the bidding process for funding will be simplified. However there are still a proliferation of different central government funds and localities must compete for these monies.  In addition many areas are finding that the money allocated from the Shared Prosperity Fund does not match previous regional funding from the EU which will slow progress.