Recommendation 146

The National Audit Office (NAO) published a report considering the value for money of three of these funding programmes in November 2023. 286 The report focused on the Towns Fund, the Levelling Up Fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, and it considered the expenditure and progress of projects for each fund up to 31 March 2023. On 15 March 2024, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published the report from its inquiry into the issues raised by the NAO. 287 The NAO concluded that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) had “a poor understanding of what had worked in its previous local growth programmes and was not well placed to manage the increase in grant-making required by the programmes.” 288 It also concluded that the department was “slow to agree funding” which “led to many projects needing to be adjusted or rescoped” 289 and the PAC echoed those views. 290 Both concluded that the application processes were inefficient and that the reporting requirements imposed a disproportionately large burden on local authorities. We received evidence on the programmes considered by the NAO and a number of other Government programmes. Witnesses raised similar concerns to those found by the NAO and PAC.