Recommendation 6

We recognise the Department’s plans to evaluate these funds in the short-term, but we are concerned it has no long-term plans to measure the impacts. The Department is playing catch up in its efforts to carry out robust evaluation. Having previously not considered evaluation well enough, it is now putting in place plans to carry out evaluation of the funds. Evaluating the impact and added value of levelling- up funds will be complex and will require a wider range of information than that used to award funds in the first place. It may be challenging to show clearly what outcomes can be convincingly attributed to the funding awarded. The Department expects findings from the evaluations to start becoming available from 2025. We are however concerned about how the Department will ensure robust data over the long-term and surprised that the Department has no long-term plans to know if these funds worked, for example, by reviewing over five, ten, and 15 years to find out how people have benefitted from the investments. Recommendation 6: In its Treasury Minute response, the Department should: • update us on its progress with evaluation and provide us with regular updates thereafter; and Levelling up funding to local government 9 • update us on how it will ensure it has the right data and how it will carry out evaluation over the long-term to assess whether the investments have led to sustained improvement. 10 Levelling up funding to local government 1 Progress of project delivery