Too much delay on levelling up funds, warns LGA

Local leaders have called for urgent clarity from the government on the allocation of levelling up funds after “continual” delays in Whitehall. The Local Government Association has warned that time is running out for areas to spend their initial shares of the £2.6bn UK Shared Prosperity Fund – the post-Brexit replacement for EU structural funding – by the end of the financial year. Councils submitted broad investment plans for the first £250m phase of the fund over the summer. But despite being told to expect a verdict in October, with the money to be spent by April, locals leaders say they have yet to receive the funds, or even an idea of when they will get the funds. Jayne Kirkham, a Labour councillor for Falmouth, said: “We are supposed to spend the first chunk [of the UKSPF] by the end of the financial year, but now it’s November and no one has had a bid accepted,” she said. “So how the hell are we going to spend it by the end of the financial year?” The FT (£)