To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including measures of (a) crime, (b) barriers to housing and services, (c) living environment deprivation and (d) inequalities in a local authority area when developing the index of economic resilience for the UK Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund.
Answered on
13 April 2021
We have shaped the methodologies for the UK Community Renewal Fund and the Levelling Up Fund to reflect their individual and distinct objectives and policy goals. For example, the capital-focused Levelling Up Fund will invest in local transport and high street regeneration, and therefore includes metrics around local connectivity and commercial vacancy rates.
By contrast, the revenue-focused UK Community Renewal Fund will look to invest across a range of smaller scale trial projects with the overall goal of supporting people and communities in need. For this reason it uses metrics which more broadly aim to assess a place’s general economic resilience.
Methodological notes explaining the two indices have been published and can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-fund-additional-documents .