Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 25
25
Accepted
Department lacks long-term evaluation plan using public data but indicates consideration.
Conclusion
We asked the department whether it had a plan to use publicly available data to have a snapshot review at different points, for example five, ten or 15 years after a project had concluded, so that the department could continue the learning about what works. The Department told us it did not have a specific plan to do so, but this was something it would consider.68 64 Q 138 65 Q 117 66 Qq 122, 136 67 Q 136 68 Qq 151, 152 18 Levelling up funding to local government
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the committee's conclusion that it should have a plan for long-term project review and states a target implementation date of December 2025. It clarifies that it believes existing evaluation strategies and published studies already incorporate plans to measure long-term impact for local growth programmes, including data requirements and commissioning external experts.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
6.1 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.