Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Accepted
Department progresses evaluation procurement, anticipating impact findings by 2025-2027.
Conclusion
We questioned the Department on its approach to evaluation.60 The NAO had reported that the Department had published its overarching evaluation strategy in November 2022.61 The NAO report said the Department was behind where it wanted to be with the procurement of its evaluation work, so we asked the Department what it had done to correct this.62 In response the Department said it had now published feasibility studies and made progress on procuring evaluation for the funds and was working to strike the balance between having in place a robust methodology and speed of delivery. The Department told us it expected to have findings on impact and value for money of the funds between 2025 to 2027.63 In addition, it told us about two other activities that will provide information more quickly: it is carrying out 36 place-based evaluations looking at 51 Q 91 52 Q 99 53 Qq 10, Q16 54 Q 16 55 Q 52 56 Q 89 57 Q 86 58 Committee of Public Accounts, Local Economic Growth, Fifth Report of Session 2022-23, HC 252, 8 June 2022 59 Q 143 60 Qq 57, 115 61 C&AG’s Report Para 3.3 62 Q 115 63 Qq 119, 147 Levelling up funding to local government 17 the totality of funding intervention, and carrying out a survey of 180,000 people to seek to understand the impact that the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, in particular, is having on the pride in place mission set out in the Levelling Up white paper.64
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the committee's conclusion regarding its approach to evaluation and progress on procurement, setting a target implementation date of December 2025. It reaffirms its plans for long-term impact measurement, detailing published evaluation strategies, feasibility studies, data requirements, and the use of external experts, asserting that these plans are clearly set out and represent significant improvement.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2025 6.2 The government believes it does have plans to measure the long-term impact. The plans are clearly and transparently set out in the public domain. Indeed, the recent NAO report recognised the significant improvement the department has made in evaluating local growth programmes with evaluation strategies now published for key evaluations. 6.3 The department has published feasibility and scoping studies for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, Levelling Up Fund, Towns Fund, Local Growth Fund alongside a local growth evaluation strategy. These can be accessed on the DLUHC local growth evaluation homepage. 6.4 There are specific challenges in evaluating the impact of local growth programmes. These include the difficulty of identifying meaningful comparator places and attributing impacts to specific interventions where places may receive multiple or overlapping funding streams. 6.5 The department is combatting these challenges. The published feasibility and scoping studies set out plans for evaluation including data requirements to ensure the department has the right data to support planned evaluation activity. In some situations, this involves building robust spatial data such as through the local authority level boost to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Community Life Survey (England), to provide estimates of Pride in Place at the local authority level. 6.6 Due to the particular technical challenges in conducting an impact evaluation for local growth programmes, the department commissions external experts to explore the methodologies that can be used to robustly measure the impacts and value for money of these programmes. These reports will be published for transparency.