From our “overlooked” region the nearest this levelling up gets is a solitary mention of Torquay! – Owl

More than 50 “overlooked” UK towns will each be given £20 million over a 10-year period to help regenerate high streets and tackle anti-social behaviour.

Natalie Chalk inews.co.uk 

The Prime Minister said the long-term vision for towns, backed by £1 billion of investment, was about putting “funding in the hands of local people” to improve their communities.

The announcement made on Saturday will see 55 towns, including seven in Scotland and four in Wales, given a £20 million endowment-style fund – each to be spent over the course of a decade.

It is set to be used on local priorities such as reviving high streets, tackling anti-social behaviour, improving transport, boosting visitor numbers and growing the local economy.

The investment in towns such as Grimsby in Lincolnshire, Wrexham in Wales and Dumfries in Scotland comes on the eve of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

Prime Minister and Tory leader Rishi Sunak said: “Towns are the place most of us call home and where most of us go to work.

“But politicians have always taken towns for granted and focused on cities.

“The result is the half-empty high streets, rundown shopping centres and anti-social behaviour that undermine many towns’ prosperity and hold back people’s opportunity – and without a new approach, these problems will only get worse.

“That changes today. Our Long-Term Plan for Towns puts funding in the hands of local people themselves to invest in line with their priorities, over the long-term. That is how we level up.”

As part of the investment, the towns will set up a town board, bringing together community leaders, employers, local authorities and the local MP, to help deliver a plan for consultation.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said the town boards would be able to use a suite of regeneration powers while deploying the new funding.

Officials suggested more private sector investment could be unlocked by auctioning empty high street shops, reforming licensing rules on shops and restaurants, and supporting more housing in urban centres.

They said research showed communities want to see more green spaces created and market days established to enhance town centres, with policing hotspots implemented to make public spaces safer.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove said: “We know that in our towns the values of hard work and solidarity, common sense and common purpose, endeavour and quiet patriotism have endured across generations.

“But for too long, too many of our great British towns have been overlooked and undervalued.

“We are putting this right through our Long-Term Plan for Towns backed by over £1 billion of levelling up funding.

“This will empower communities in every part of the UK to take back control of their future, taking long term decisions in the interests of local people.

“It will mean more jobs, more opportunities and a brighter future for our towns and the people who live and work in them.”

Ministers have promised central government support for the town boards as they formulate their vision.

A Towns Taskforce, sitting in the Department for Levelling Up and reporting directly to the Prime Minister and Mr Gove, will help them develop their plans and advise on how best to take advantage of government policies, unlock private and philanthropic investment and work with communities.

DLUHC said towns had been allocated funding according to the Levelling Up Needs Index, taking into account metrics covering skills, pay, productivity and health, as well as the Index of Multiple Deprivation, to ensure funding goes directly to the towns which will benefit most.

Mr Gove’s department said the Government would work with local councils and the devolved administrations to determine how towns in Scotland and Wales will benefit from funding and powers under the proposals.

Officials said they “look forward” to working with a restored executive, with powersharing currently collapsed in Stormont, to determine the approach for providing support to Northern Ireland’s towns.

The full list of 55 towns benefiting from £20 million of funding:

• Mansfield
• Boston
• Worksop
• Skegness
• Newark-on-Trent
• Chesterfield
• Clifton (Nottingham)
• Spalding
• Kirkby-in-Ashfield
• Clacton-on-Sea
• Great Yarmouth
• Eston
• Jarrow
• Washington
• Blyth (Northumberland)
• Hartlepool
• Spennymoor
• Darwen
• Chadderton
• Heywood
• Ashton-under-Lyne
• Accrington
• Leigh (Wigan)
• Farnworth
• Nelson (Pendle)
• Kirkby
• Burnley
• Hastings
• Bexhill-on-Sea
• Ryde
• Torquay
• Smethwick
• Darlaston
• Bilston (Wolverhampton)
• Dudley
• Grimsby
• Castleford
• Doncaster
• Rotherham
• Barnsley
• Scunthorpe
• Keighley
• Dewsbury
• Scarborough
• Merthyr Tydfil
• Cwmbran
• Wrexham
• Barry (Vale of Glamorgan)
• Greenock
• Irvine
• Kilmarnock
• Coatbridge
• Clydebank
• Dumfries
• Elgin

Additional reporting by Press Association

The Conservatives gather in Manchester this weekend, giving them an opportunity to celebrate 13 years in power. Yet there is a risk the event might take on the air of a wake.

John Curtice www.independent.co.uk

The party finds itself on average 18 points behind Labour in the polls, little better than its position 12 months ago after Liz Truss was displaced as prime minister by Rishi Sunak. Meanwhile, YouGov’s data suggests that Mr Sunak’s initial personal popularity has largely disappeared, leaving him barely any more popular than his party.

In short, the Conservatives appear to be heading unwaveringly on a course that leads towards heavy defeat in an election that is now at most little more than a year away.

But why do they find themselves in this position – and thus need to engineer a radical change in the public mood if they are to be in power after the next election? Some potentially valuable clues are to be found in the answers to two questions included in a poll conducted by the Public First agency for the Conservative-inclined Onward think tank at the beginning of August.

The company asked voters first of all what they thought the main achievements of the Conservatives had been over the last 13 years.

The most widely acknowledged by far was securing early access to a Covid vaccine – picked out by 40 per cent. Meanwhile, around one in five reckoned Brexit and gay marriage could be added to the list (though Conservatives themselves were keener on the former than the latter). Nothing else was selected by many more than one in ten.

Then, Public First asked what the party’s main failures were. Top of the list, again on 40 per cent, was too little effort on the NHS. At the same time, between a quarter and a third identified the cost of living, Liz Truss’ handling of the economy, high levels of immigration, and lockdown parties. In addition, Brexit was the one subject that appeared on both sides of the ledger. The list of failures is rather longer than the list of perceived achievements.

There is also clear evidence in the polls that those who voted Conservative in 2019, and who think that things have gone badly, are less likely to say they would vote Conservative again than those Tory supporters who think rather better about how things have been going. In short, the perception of failure is associated with defection.

For example, on health, the British Election Study’s big internet panel shows that just 45 per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2019 and who think the NHS has gotten a lot worse say they would vote Conservative again. In contrast, three-quarters of those who feel the NHS has gotten better say they will vote for the party again.

Trouble is, 2019 Conservative voters are twice as likely to think the health service has gotten a lot worse than they are to believe it has got better.

Similarly, on the economy, the same study shows that only around a half of those 2019 Conservatives who think the economy has gotten a lot worse now say they will vote Conservative – compared with three-quarters of those who are less critical of the state of the economy.

And nearly two in five 2019 Conservatives think the economy has gotten a lot worse.

Fortunately, for the Conservatives, very few of their supporters have changed their mind about Brexit – though only one in three of those who have, and would now vote to rejoin the EU, would back the party again.

However, on immigration the story is different. Whether or not 2019 Conservative voters think immigration has gone up or down makes relatively little difference to whether they would vote Conservative again. According to the recent polling conducted by Redfield & Wilton for the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, the difference is no more than five points.

The picture is much the same in respect of “illegal” immigration, on which the prime minister has placed so much emphasis with his pledge to stop the boats.

While Conservative supporters are particularly keen to see immigration reduced, the government’s perceived failure to do so is not something that is dissuading them from voting Conservative again.

Meanwhile, collectively the polls conducted since the government’s latest attempt to appeal to its core voters by slowing the implementation of some net zero measures has had – at most – no more than a marginal impact on the party’s standing in the polls.

The message is clear. If the Conservatives are to regain their lost support, they need to crack the hard nut of solving Britain’s fiscal and economic crisis – a weak economy, an inflationary spiral, and poorly functioning public services. That means cutting NHS times as well as halving inflation. Trying to focus voters’ attention elsewhere, such as on so-called “wedge issues” like immigration and net zero, is unlikely to be enough.

John Curtice is professor of politics, Strathclyde University, and senior research Fellow, National Centre for Social Research and ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’. He is also co-host of the ‘Trendy’ podcast

Five Devon constituencies feature on leaked ‘non-priority’ list (including Honiton and Sidmouth).

So the “progressive alliance” vote is now less likely to be divided in Honiton and Sidmouth, not good news for the chicken runner! – Owl

The Labour Party won’t plough resources into trying to beat Tory Kevin Foster in Torbay at the next general election, according to a leaked document.

The bay is one of five of Devon’s parliamentary constituencies to appear on the list of ‘non-priority’ seats for the party. The others are Honiton and Sidmouth; Tiverton and Minehead; Torridge and Tavistock and North Devon.

Guy Henderson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

It means the party has effectively conceded that it can’t win in much of Devon, however well it is doing in the national polls.

The county’s political map will change significantly the next time the country goes to the polls, when existing boundaries for a number of constituencies change, along with some of their names.

The Totnes constituency, for instance, will be known as South Devon to reflect the fact that it includes towns such as Brixham, Dartmouth and Kingsbridge.

There will also be changes elsewhere in the county, where unfamiliar names on voting papers will include Honiton and Sidmouth; Exmouth and East Exeter; Tiverton and Minehead and  Torridge and Tavistock.

The list indicates Labour doesn’t think five seats are winnable, and therefore will not receive large amounts of central campaign funding.

Labour is currently leading in national opinion polls. The decision not to focus on the five leaked seats means more vigorous Labour campaigning could be expected in Central Devon; Exeter; Exeter East and Exmouth; Newton Abbot; Plymouth Moor View; Plymouth Sutton and Devonport; South Devon and South West Devon.

The next general election has to take place by 28 January 2025. While no official announcement has been made, it is considered possible that the election could take place on Thursday 2 May next year.

Currently Devon has two Labour MPs – Sir Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) and Luke Pollard (Plymouth Sutton and Devonport) – one Liberal Democrat – Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) and nine Conservative MPs.

They are Selaine Saxby (North Devon), Kevin Foster (Torbay), Simon Jupp (East Devon), Anthony Mangnall (Totnes), Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot), Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon), Mel Stride (Central Devon) and Johnny Mercer (Plymouth Moor View) and Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge).
 

Should the enormous engineering feat of HS2 become Rishi Sunak’s white elephant, these could be its expensive tusks.

At what was once a staging post but now looks like the end of the line, Old Oak Common, two brand new tunnel boring machines are to be buried underground, unused, ready for action – a mere £40m of kit that may never now drill the route’s last six miles east into central London.

Gwyn Topham www.theguardian.com 

As a percentage of HS2’s outlay, a sunk £40m barely scrapes into the decimal points. A high-speed rail network originally budgeted at £32.7bn to link London, Manchester and Leeds in 2012 was revised up to £55bn in 2015. It remains at the current £71bn only due to savage pruning and a wilful refusal to update the price over years of runaway inflation.

HS2’s precarious future was underlined when the prime minister again on Thursday repeatedly refused to answer questions about building north of Birmingham – and talked up the merits of the Old Oak Common development.

The future station there will knit together Elizabeth line and Great Western main line services with HS2 trains arriving underneath, in the yawning 850m-long box already largely excavated in west London.

But only six high-speed train platforms will be available – fewer than at Euston – severely limiting any possible services to Manchester, the connection regarded even by supporters as the bare minimum for HS2 to make economic sense.

Developers at Old Oak Common are clear: the job of HS2 Ltd, and the contractors they supervise, is to deliver according to the government’s mandate – no matter how much that might be delayed, rejigged, gold-plated or cast into uncertainty.

Others working on the line are less diplomatic and restrained. “We’re a political project first and a construction project second,” says one senior manager.

HS2 and its contractors have had to accept a pause in construction to central London, announced by the transport secretary, Mark Harper, in March – just two months after the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, had committed to running the trains to Euston.

Under current plans, the two state-of-the-art tunnel boring machines under construction in Germany will be buried in an antechamber under Old Oak, to avoid jeopardising other crucial engineering work, while they await the go-ahead to Euston. It is not impossible to resume tunnelling under central London once trains or passengers start using the station – simply exponentially more difficult, disruptive and, again, expensive.

At Rickmansworth, Buckinghamshire, HS2’s biggest work site nestles just inside the M25, with purpose-built plants producing bespoke concrete segments for two of the most significant civil engineering works: the giant Colne Valley viaduct and the 13km tunnels through the Chilterns.

Acute inflation in construction – with labour scarce after Brexit and Covid and the cost of materials such as steel sent soaring by the war in Ukraine – left managers here with stark decisions. Buying a batch of steel reinforcements that had arrived in Liverpool at three times the normal price had to be set against the even greater cost of delaying tunnelling.

Both of these landmark projects also illustrate how other billions have clocked up. The tunnels, an early expensive concession to MPs in Conservative marginals, are extended with additional noise mitigation structures at the portal – a couple of hundred yards away from the constant roar of motorway traffic.

The tunnel ventilation shafts popping up at Chalfont Saint Peters and every few miles through the Chilterns will be artfully designed to look like barns and farmyards. A further redesign demanded by councils has come at another £3m cost, according to HS2.

The 3.4km length viaduct across the Colne Valley lakes – themselves partly human-made after quarrying and dredging – is built with special V-shaped concrete supports. It is designed to resemble a stone skimming across the surface of a lake – and make the construction palatable to the local authority, with a concrete finish that might not look out of place in a kitchen worktop.

There may well have been a cheaper way. But the environmental mitigations and cosmetic demands – largely from local Tory councils and politicians, ordering extravagant side dishes and then railing against the final bill – are, as one weary HS2 manager put it, simply the cost of building infrastructure in an island crammed with private property.

Prof Andrew McNaughton, who was technical director of HS2 from 2009 until 2017, concurs that costs have spun out of control, and the construction overdesigned – but believes a reset can put it back on track.

Two other factors, in his view, have piled on cost: the way contracts have been shaped and the excessive number of managers. Giving liability to the contractor has encouraged “designing for the worst possible case, deeper foundations, sinking more piles into the ground – these things add up”.

Meanwhile, McNaughton says, the project is being overseen by not just HS2 Ltd, but hundreds of Department for Transport employees and “development partners” from engineering consultancy firms: “You end up with this white-collar army out of proportion to what you see anywhere else in Europe.”

Although HS2 Ltd’s staffing and salaries appear excessive – with more than 40 employees earning more than £150,000 per annum and chief executives paid more than any other public official – McNaughton says that the bigger impact is the “creation of bureaucracy”: slowing down decisions and the signoff of designs, breeding uncertainty and piling on cost.

Nowhere has that been more evident than Euston station itself, where the estimated HS2 bill has ballooned to nearly £5bn, mired in indecision and uncertainty, according to the National Audit Office.

Meanwhile, arguments that were long deemed settled in parliament have been re-opened, with suspicious degrees of political expediency – from the review promised by Boris Johnson when vying for the party leadership in 2018, to the quiet axing of the Golborne Link through 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady’s constituency last year, to Sunak’s pre-election jockeying now.

For Northern mayors, who united in saying this week that stopping HS2 at Birmingham would be “an international embarrassment and a national outrage”, the added danger is the threat to work on Northern Powerhouse Rail, which was to be built upon Phase 2. Potential offers to divert funds into conventional rail – with yet more redesign and delay costs – might prove equally contentious: the price tag for the TransPennine route upgrade is running three times over budget.

At the other end of the planned line, near Euston, where the majority of people displaced by HS2 once lived, is a mothballed construction site: a “scar on London”, according to Mark Reynolds, the infuriated chief executive of contractor Mace. While the prolonged indecision at the height of government continues, Camden has a “a hole in the ground which is splitting apart and blighting our communities”. As a local councillor, Danny Beales, put it: “All this pain, for no long-term gain, is not acceptable.”