Research and analysis

Glasgow City Region UKSPF evaluation: interim findings

Updated 3 December 2025

Applies to Scotland

Executive Summary: Glasgow City Region interim findings

Introduction

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) provides a total of £3.5 billion of funding for local investment over 4 years (2022 to 2026), with all places receiving an allocation via a funding formula. Local decision-makers work with their local communities and partners to deliver interventions under three investment priorities: Communities and Place, Supporting Local Businesses and People and Skills.

This interim report presents the emerging findings from the place level evaluation of UKSPF in Glasgow City Region (GCR), based on research conducted between December 2024 and February 2025. It outlines the progress made to date and presents interim evaluation findings.

Key process evaluation findings

Intervention design

• Soon after UKSPF was announced, Chief Executives from GCR’s eight member authorities (MAs) agreed to give GCR a coordinating role to prepare a single UKSPF investment plan for the region.
• Individual MAs led on the selection of projects to be delivered under the UKSPF interventions within their areas, ensuring alignment to local needs.
• Stakeholders found the timelines to submit a finalised investment plan to the UK Government to be very tight. GCR successfully negotiated a one-month extension with MHCLG, allowing them to submit their investment plan on 1 September 2022.
• The flexibility offered by UKSPF, particularly in enabling MAs to tailor projects within investment priorities, was seen as a positive aspect which empowered local decision-making.

Portfolio implementation

• The programme timescales created pressure on stakeholders to spend UKSPF funds quickly. They believed that this affected their ability to thoroughly assess and address local needs, as rapid deployment had to be prioritised.
• Direct outreach to established providers to deliver interventions under UKSPF facilitated rapid project mobilisation. However, it limited the extent of engagement with new suppliers or the introduction of innovative approaches to service delivery.
• A lack of clear guidance from MHCLG on defining outputs and outcomes was highlighted as a challenge to designing an effective programme of support. MAs and delivery partners were required to identify target outputs and outcomes in January 2023, based on their own assumptions about how these would be defined.

Intervention delivery

• Collaboration between teams, both within and between MAs, was identified as a success factor for delivery. Good communication and effective partnerships were specifically identified as being important to this collaborative working.
• Although stakeholders were generally positive about what UKSPF had enabled them to deliver, they highlighted various challenges faced in delivery, including timescale-related pressure, internal staffing issues, and managing budgets.

Data collection and monitoring

• GCR’s process of collecting monitoring data and reporting this to the UK Government was multi-tiered, involving project leads, officers within MAs, the Programme Management Support Officer for GCR, and the GCR Cabinet.
• For GCR, the role of collating data from across the region was often laborious and, due to the extra layer of governance involved, GCR was unable to meet MHCLG’s timescales for reporting. MHCLG afforded some extra time to GCR in recognition of this, but reporting timescales remained tight.

Multiply

• A key consideration in deciding how to use Multiply funding was to avoid duplication with the People and Skills interventions. Some stakeholders said they would have welcomed greater flexibility in how the Multiply funding could be used to ensure alignment with their local needs and priorities.
• Implementation challenges were somewhat mitigated through GCR’s regional approach, which allowed Multiply underspend in some MAs to be redirected to other MAs to expand their Multiply provision.

Progress to date: expenditure, outputs and outcomes

As of September 2024, GCR had committed £58.7 million in UKSPF funding. Expenditure in year 1 (2022/23) was much lower than anticipated, and the underspend was reallocated to year 2 and year 3.

Progress towards outputs and outcomes varied by investment priority. With strong progress towards target outputs and outcomes for People and Skills, especially the number of people supported to participate in education, to gain a qualification and to gain employment. Following support, more than 800 people had gained a qualification or completed a course, and more than 1,700 people were in employment. Progress towards output and outcomes targets for Supporting Local Businesses has been more limited. There were 14 output targets identified for this priority, of which eight had some progress recorded but none had been attained, at time of reporting.

Early impact findings

Early impact evidence indicates progress in several areas, though further data is needed to fully assess outcomes. Notable early results include reduced barriers preventing people from gaining and sustaining employment: 287 people reported increased employability through interpersonal skills development, 182 people reported reduced structural barriers into employment and into skills provision, and 40 people were recorded as having sustained employment for at least six months after support.

The outcomes and impact of UKSPF in Glasgow City Region will be explored in more depth in the final evaluation report.