Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
The Department has been considering an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework for local growth to...
Conclusion
The Department has been considering an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework for local growth to include common objectives and outcomes, within which individual programme-level frameworks would sit. This would enable it to compare the relative effectiveness of similar initiatives and minimise the data collection burden on local authorities. The Department has not yet started to develop this framework but is now developing detailed monitoring and evaluation plans for each of its local growth funds. These are at different stages of implementation. The Department has previously committed to defining a common set of metrics to aid comparison across places, but without significant progress.70
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
2.1 The department agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: September 2023 2.2 The department has a strong understanding of what works for local growth, as demonstrated by the literature review within the Levelling Up White Paper. 2.3 What works in local growth is a complex research area and unsurprisingly there remain some evidence gaps. The department is proactively filling these through engagement with academics and learning from forthcoming evaluations of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), Levelling Up Fund, Towns Fund, Freeports, and Local Growth Fund (LGF). With the exception of UKSPF and LGF, evaluation strategies have already been published. The LGF evaluation is currently being scoped with view to publishing an evaluation next year. The UKSPF strategy will be published later this year. 2.4 In addition, the department has established the Spatial Data Unit, which is improving the subnational data that is needed for effective evaluation. Also, as noted in the Levelling Up White Paper, the government is committed to working with academics and industry experts to test and trial how best to design evaluation of local interventions and introduce more experimentation at the policy design stage. 2.5 Processes to feed evaluation findings into local growth activity and wider levelling up agenda is at the design stage. The government will be pleased to share progress on this and developments on evaluation commitments in a year’s time.