Transparency data

Capital levelling up bids: accounting officer assessment

Updated 6 March 2024

1. Background and Context

The second round of the Levelling Up Fund concluded in January 2023, with £2.1 billion of cross department Levelling Up Fund (LUF) money fully allocated to 111 bids from across the UK.

The approach to decision making and bid selection is set out in the published LUF Round 2 Explanatory Note. As is clear in that note, to bring the total outlay in Great Britain back within the £2.1 billion budget, ministers agreed to de-select a handful of lowest-scoring bids from those regions/ nations that significantly exceeded their guided allocation, taking into account historical regional investment from 2017-2022. This saw 5 high-quality bids narrowly miss out on funding as a result.

At this time, the department had a small amount of unallocated departmental spend available in support of levelling up. It was decided to allocate that to three of these near miss LUF bids.

2. Assessment against the Accounting Officer standards

a. Regularity

There are no regularity concerns because the department holds the powers to issue grants to local authorities across England under Section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003.

An equalities impact assessment was undertaken and submitted to ministers for consideration prior to decisions being finalised.

Funding awards will be provisional subject to further checks on subsidy control.

Overall assessment

My assessment is that the regularity test is satisfied.

b. Propriety

We considered the 5 near miss bids. Three of these bids were from the North West and two were from London. It was decided to fund the three bids from the North West on the basis that London has historically attracted considerably more public investment relative to other English regions according to Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis Data from 2017-2020. At the point the decision was made in January, the option of funding all 5 was discounted on grounds of affordability concerns given the uncertainty at that time over available funding in future years. The 3 bids that will receive funding are listed at annex A.

Overall assessment

My assessment is that the propriety test is satisfied.

c. Value for Money

These three bids had already been rigorously assessed against the published LUF assessment framework. This included a value for money assessment. These bids all have a VFM category of high or very high. To further safeguard value for money, reporting and evaluation requirements will be placed on grant recipients to help monitor the delivery of expected outputs and outcomes.

Overall assessment

My assessment is that the value for money test is satisfied.

d. Feasibility

Delivery of these three bids is feasible. The package is affordable and will be funded from departmental budgets. The deliverability of individual bids had been tested through the prior LUF assessment.

We will oversee the delivery of them under our established LUF delivery framework.

Overall assessment

My assessment is that the feasibility test is satisfied.

3. Conclusion

The above represents a summary of the key points which informed my decision. If any of these factors materially change during the lifetime of this project, I undertake to prepare a revised summary, setting out my assessment of them.

This summary will be published on the government’s website (GOV.UK). Copies will be deposited in the Library of the House of Commons and sent to the Comptroller and Auditor General and Treasury Officer of Accounts.

Sarah Healey

15 March 2023

Annex A

Local Authority	Bid Name	Bid amount
Sefton Council	Bootle Town Centre Transformation Phase 1	£20,000,000.00
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council	Marple Active Communities Hub	£19,701,066.00
Rossendale Borough Council	Rossendale Powering and Unlocking Sustainable Growth	£17,952,812.00