Levelling up a ‘meaningless slogan’ for many middle and lower incomes in Arun

The White Paper, a policy document setting out proposals for future legislation, outlines ‘twelve bold national missions’ to shift government focus and resources to Britain’s ‘forgotten communities’ between now and 2030.

The first mission for example states the aim to see pay, employment and productivity grow everywhere and the disparities between the best and worst performing areas narrow.

Others include bringing the rest of the country’s local public transport systems much closer to the standard of London’s, eliminating illiteracy and innumeracy in primary school leavers, halving the number of poor quality rental homes, decreasing serious crime in the most blighted areas and rejuvenating the most run-down town centres and communities.

Meanwhile every part of England getting a ‘London-style’ devolution deal if they wish to.

Mr Gove said: “Not everyone shares equally in the UK’s success. For decades, too many communities have been overlooked and undervalued. As some areas have flourished, others have been left in a cycle of decline. The UK has been like a jet firing on only one engine.

“Levelling up and this White Paper is about ending this historic injustice and calling time on the postcode lottery.

“This will not be an easy task, and it won’t happen overnight, but our 12 new national levelling up missions will drive real change in towns and cities across the UK, so that where you live will no longer determine how far you can go.”

Funding under the umbrella of levelling up has previously been announced for projects in Bognor Regis, Crawley, Eastbourne, Hastings, Hove, Littlehampton, Newhaven and Seaford.

The White Paper also highlights planned investment to the A27 at both Arundel and Lewes, improvements to the Brighton Main Line, an upgraded Gatwick Airport railway station, a new life sciences building at the University of Sussex, a new hospital for Eastbourne and a regional centre for teaching, trauma and tertiary care at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

New announcements included East Sussex being one of 55 education investment areas where school outcomes are ‘currently weakest’ and is line to benefit from intensive investment and support from the Department for Education.

Meanwhile Eastbourne and Brighton & Hove are two of 68 new areas which will be supported by the High Streets Task Force.

While Greater London and the areas around the capital are among the most prosperous parts of the country, the picture is more complex than a north-south divide.

Even in West Sussex there are deprived areas desperately in need of investment.

The county must not suffer at the expense of other areas.

The White Paper comes as our local authorities have been starved of funding since 2010, forcing them to make cuts and savings across the board, while since 2015 council tax bills have gone up year after year.

Meanwhile with many households already struggling financially, the country faces a cost of living crisis as inflation is increasing, energy bills are going up and a National Insurance rise is on the way.

County councillors respond

Kirsty Lord, Lib Dem opposition group leader at County Hall, said: “The people of West Sussex are facing a cost of living crisis and Tory tax hikes are just months away.

“Meanwhile West Sussex County Council is facing a shortfall of some £25m in 2023. Both the residents and the council needed to see detailed support being offered now.

“Instead we were given a White Paper containing information seemingly culled from Wikipedia and vague promises of improvement elsewhere by 2030.

“Our MPs – who include several ministers and the Prime Minister’s latest right hand man – now need to focus less on their ambitions in Westminster and more on the people who elected them.

“West Sussex residents need to see them standing up for this county and making the case for investment here not elsewhere.”

But Paul Marshall, leader of WSCC, welcomed the White Paper as it ‘provides a clearer framework of what levelling up means and along with the steps and opportunities’.

He added: “This is a positive step. As the Conservative leader I, along with colleagues, will be reviewing the White Paper, nearly 400 pages.

“I want to ensure that we take every opportunity to deliver the best outcomes for our residents and businesses in this county. I welcome the opportunity to explore those outcomes that comes with devolution.”

Caroline Baxter, leader of the Labour group, described how settlement funding for the county had been slashed even since 2018 dwarfing any successful bids to the towns fund and levelling up fund.

She said: “While West Sussex residents and our local economies brace themselves from the highest taxes and inflation levels seen in decades, this does little to reassure them that local authorities will be able to deliver services and protect our communities.”

She added: “West Sussex needs funding to improve and deliver struggling services for children and families, public health, accessible transport links, climate, and environmental changes and to protect and regenerate our culture, arts and communities.”

Arun reaction

Arun district councillors have weighed in on the detail contained in the White Paper.

Lib Dem group leader James Walsh called levelling up a ‘meaningless slogan’ for many on middle and lower incomes in the district.

He described how under a decade of Conservative austerity housing costs had risen dramatically making the price of renting or buying ‘almost impossible’ for many young people locally. At the same time both youth and children and family centres have closed, access to care for the elderly has been made more difficult coupled with increasing costs, access to NHS dentistry is ‘near impossible’ and GP and hospital waiting lists have lengthened.

He added: “On top of that real wages for many are falling, with income tax, national insurance and council tax increases, and finally huge increases in energy prices.”

Yet he believes the government sees places such as Arun as relatively affluent, with money going to ‘so-called Red Wall seats’ in the north and Midlands instead.

Dr Walsh called for real reform of funding for local government, social care, health and housing infrastructure in districts like Arun, a stop to massive overdevelopment of executive housing on greenfields and prime countryside and a decent supply on brownfield and town centre sites of truly affordable housing for rent and purchase.

He added: “Until all this happens, there will be no discernible ‘levelling-up’ for the Arun district.”

Tony Dixon, leader of the Independent Group, said they were ‘disappointed’ with the levelling up agenda as ‘whilst good in parts’ it ‘does not go far enough in addressing some of the key problems here in the Arun district’.

He believes the agenda should have incentivised councils to engage in longer-term investment strategies to generate income for future generations and become more self-financing in the longer term.

Another problem is low wages, with Arun’s main industries traditionally being horticulture/agriculture, tourism and retail.

Mr Dixon explained: “In essence the district is a low-paid and largely seasonal economy compared with other parts of West Sussex. Our problem is not unemployment – it is low pay.”

According to figures from 2016 ‘and there have been no economic miracles in the district since then’, Arun is the second worst in the entire South East region after Thanet for gross weekly pay for full-time workers.

He added: “The low wage levels explain, in part, why something like 27 per cent of Arun people have to out-commute each day to find better paid employment.

“We would have liked to see much greater encouragement of localised schemes designed to drive up average wage levels in low pay parts of the country. The government has not done enough to address this issue.”

Meanwhile for Arun Greens the government’s levelling up agenda ‘represents a missed opportunity and the sums involved look like a sticking plaster’ after a decade of austerity when councils have been starved of funding.

The Greens have been calling for a programme of retrofitting homes and green energy systems, with local jobs being created in these areas; as well as on a systematic modernisation of public transport with new hubs, zero emission buses and cheaper fares.

Isabel Thurston, leader of the Green group at Arun, said: “I am delighted to see Littlehampton and Bognor Regis receive funding for the two projects that will see real benefits for regeneration of the towns, for both locals and visitors.

“However, in this area we are not seeing true levelling up. We have just seen the removal of the Universal Credit uplift and the Triple Lock on pensions, in addition to rising prices, all of which will impact on our more vulnerable residents.

“We would like people to be able to access the care they need, to be able to live in warm homes with secure, affordable clean energy sources, and to travel around the area with cheap, reliable public transport.”

‘Nature demoted’ says countryside charity

Professor Dan Osborn, chair of the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s Sussex branch, believes the levelling up blueprint announced by Michael Gove has a ‘gaping hole at its heart that means it won’t deliver what it could have’. And this omission might mean the initiative is ‘doomed to failure’.

He said: “All our health and wealth comes from the resources that are found in the natural world. These resources are scarce because they all come from just one planet, Earth.

“So why is this natural capital omitted from the foundation list of what needs to be accounted for when levelling up?

“If we continue to omit nature from the way we make plans and decisions, and just base those plans and decisions on the old-fashioned economics that have got us into the mess we are in at present – with climate change and water supplies etc – then we will continue to take bites out of nature and nature will bite back harder and harder. So, a levelling up course correction is needed, and fast.”

Professor Osborn points to a belated minor mention of natural capital late on in the White Paper, suggesting ‘demoting nature looks like a choice and not a mistake’.

He added: “This is no way to deal with climate change or water issues and no way to plan for the future.

“Natural capital and the services like food and water we get from ecosystems is supposed to be part of the thinking of all government departments. Why? Because it will help make more sustainable decisions as part of the government commitment to the 25-year Environment Plan.

“The trouble is that all too often old-style economic factors dominate. Social matters – like supplying truly affordable homes for local people – and environmental matters – such as ensuring there is enough water for nature, people, farming and business – often seem not to feature in decision-making at all. Nature’s capital must be just as much part of decisions as other kinds of capital drawn on to investment in the future.

“Does any of this matter to Sussex? Well yes it does, because the Government department that is setting the levelling up agenda is the same one that determines housing numbers, will have oversight of what seem like the increasingly odd plans to expand Gatwick and that has the last word on planning applications and how much money developers pay towards our social and environmental infrastructure such as schools and enhanced biodiversity.

“And all of this downgrading of the natural world comes at a time when the new Environment Bill’s provisions to protect and enhance the environment face delays in being enacted and when hard-pressed local authorities seem to have no resources to implement them.

“As Mr Gove said when he launched the 25 year Environment Plan: ‘So, protecting and enhancing the environment …. is about more than respecting nature. It is critical if the next generation is to flourish, with abundant natural resources to draw on, that we look after our and their inheritance wisely’.

“Maybe, that same Mr Gove can correct the serious omission of nature from the foundations of his levelling up plan that his current department have just issued? We cannot on any basis have our environment deteriorate any further.”

MPs welcome levelling up

Bognor Regis and Littlehampton MP Nick Gibb said: “I welcome the Government’s levelling up White Paper which sets out the Government’s plan for transforming the UK by improving public services, raising living standards and creating opportunity for everyone.”

He was ‘delighted’ Arun District Council had successfully bid for money from the levelling up fund, which will be spent on revitalising a theatre in Bognor Regis and improving Littlehampton’s seafront and riverside.

Mr Gibb added: “This will not only benefit residents but also the surrounding local economy which depends heavily on tourists and visitors year round.

“I am pleased that schools in West Sussex will benefit from £682 million in funding next year. This is a boost of £47 million in funding as part of the Government’s £4 billion increase in spending for schools across the country.”

Arundel and South Downs MP Andrew Griffith added: “The levelling up White Paper recognises that some parts of the United Kingdom do not share equally in our country’s success. Pockets of disadvantage may be found even in otherwise more prosperous communities. Rural poverty or some of our coastal communities for example.

“The Government has a clear strategy to tackle this, head on. Rural West Sussex, in my view, will certainly benefit from much of the investment that the Government is putting in place to ensure that everyone, everywhere, has an equal opportunity to flourish.

“Most tangibly, if levelling up can reverse the ‘southern tilt’ in our economy in the medium term, we may expect fewer homes to be required on green field land in West Sussex.

“Another way that our hamlets and villages scattered across the South Downs will feel the benefits of Levelling Up is through broadband improvements. Up to 68,000 rural homes and businesses across West Sussex will benefit from £112 million of investment which will secure lightning-fast gigabit-capable (that’s 1000mb/s) connections.

“Levelling up is also about to boosting funding for education, and commits to an extra £405m extra for mainstream schools in 2022/23. This is an increase of almost six per cent per pupil. This will provide extra support for students catch up from the pandemic and will help schools meet the mission of eliminating illiteracy and innumeracy.

“Further education provision in West Sussex will also benefit from Levelling Up. The already outstanding Chichester College Group, education teenagers and adults across the county, will become an Institute of Technology – gaining access to employer-led support which will ensure people from all backgrounds will have the opportunity to secure high-skilled and rewarding careers. This is in addition to the White Paper’s proposed investment of £3.8 billion to secure a Lifetime Skills Guarantee, meaning thousands of adults across West Sussex will have the opportunity to gain a new qualification for free.

“West Sussex is generally a very safe area to live, and we must be thankful for that. But occasionally, we need the support of our police. That is why I am pleased that 182 additional Police Officers have been recruited in Sussex as part of the Government’s plan to recruit 20,000 new police officers, whilst the county has benefitted from nearly £1 million of Safer Streets Funding focused on preventing neighbourhood crime.”