Almost £2.5bn lost in levelling up underspend

A quarter of levelling up funding – close to £2.5bn – will go unspent this year. New figures provided to MPs show almost all of the unspent cash relates to capital spending on housing or housing-related projects, such as cleaning up industrial land for development and providing loans to developers or potential homeowners. It includes £1bn originally intended for new affordable homes this year. A budget update from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities blames “market conditions” affecting housing development, “economic volatility” and “delivery delays” for the intended changes to capital expenditure originally signed off by MPs. The Labour Party accused the government of “a new level of incompetence”. The FT (£)