Recommendation 5

The Department is providing focused support to some local authorities with project delivery, but it remains to be seen how the Department will use any learning from these activities to support all local authorities. In addition to the flexibilities introduced in the pathfinder simplification pilots (see above), the Department is providing focused support to local authorities to help them unblock and deliver their projects. This includes area teams that work with local authorities and departmental experts that it is deploying into 25 local authorities to help them unblock delivery. The Department also has an additional £65 million to provide additional funding to local authorities who received funds under the Levelling Up Fund and to provide external experts to build capacity and capability in local authorities. But the Department’s focused support is available to only a small number of local authorities. It remains to be seen how the Department is going to disseminate these lessons to support all local authorities and how they will use these lessons to improve their approach in the future. Recommendation 5: The Department should set out in its Treasury Minute response the lessons it is learning from its local support work and how it will disseminate the lessons to all local authorities.