This is a design failure, and the design is still with us.

The Guardian’s analysis of FOI data, published on Saturday, covers the Future High Streets Fund, Town Deals and the Levelling Up Fund. In 73 council areas with an accepted bid, not a single project had been completed. The explanations offered are the pandemic, inflation and short-term, centrally controlled funding. All three are true. None explains why some places finished and most did not, under the same inflation and the same rules.

The Levelling Up Fund asked under-resourced councils with hollowed-out capacity to provide plans for, and deliver ‘shovel-ready’ projects deliverable at speed. Most places had nothing of the kind, because nobody had ever resourced them to build a pipeline, and competitive bidding rewards the council that says its project is readier than it is. So councils bid with ideas rather than schemes: scoped in weeks, costed in a hurry, the hard questions about land, planning, utilities and cashflow left for later. Later is when the contractor’s price came in high, the landowner went quiet and the grid connection slipped. The gap was built-in on day one.

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿

They kept a standing pipeline of propositions at graduated stages of readiness: problem diagnosed, options appraised, costs and dependencies understood. When the window opened they updated the costs and were contracting within months. The places that started deciding what to do with the money on the day the allocation was confirmed were, eighteen months later, still deciding. Nobody cuts a ribbon on an appraisal process. It decides whether a place can spend what it wins.

‘𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗺’ 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀! One action that strategic authorities and local authorities can do now is: to build their PMO (project / programme management office).

Both books cover this ground. In www.lredhandbook.com Chapter 5 (Policy) on the implementation gap and the Levelling Up Fund, and Chapter 6 (Strategy) on why annual budgets and short policy cycles stall delivery. In www.prosperityineverypostcode.com Chapter 1 on the begging bowl and institutional churn, Chapter 7 on building the project pipeline, and Chapter 8 on what to do when delivery stalls.

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