Recommendation 1

HM Government Accepted

The Levelling Up White Paper set 12 Levelling Up ‘Missions’ to anchor ambition and provide clarity over the objectives of public policy for the next decade. It also identified key drivers and commitments for achieving the missions and underpinning metrics to show how progress could be monitored. Delivering on these missions will improve people’s lives by improving living standards, spreading opportunities and enhancing economic growth, restoring local pride, spreading opportunity and empowering local leaders across the country. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill sets out the framework for formalising the Levelling Up missions, including those missions identified by the Committee as providing opportunities for place-based cultural policymaking - through publishing a missions statement, and through a statutory duty to publish an annual report to analyse progress. This will enable public scrutiny and ensure the Government is accountable for delivering the Levelling Up missions. DCMS is working closely with DLUHC to develop the metrics and drivers of the Wellbeing and Pride in Place exploratory missions. DCMS has recently commissioned a major ‘what works’ evidence review to help us understand how to best design and deliver interventions which increase pride in place through the culture and heritage sectors. This is being delivered by Arup, the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, and the London School of Economics (LSE). In addition, DCMS is supporting DLUHC to recognise the value of cultural and heritage participation to people’s sense of Pride in Place and individual wellbeing, and the particular potential that cultural and heritage activities have to drive positive change in these areas, in ways that reflect the unique and distinctive characters and histories of communities and places around the UK. DCMS has also significantly invested in the Culture and Heritage Capital (CHC) Programme, a world-leading research and development programme to help the culture and heritage sectors demonstrate their value to society in order to make a stronger case for investment in culture and heritage assets. The CHC Programme was officially launched in January 2021 with the publication of ‘Valuing culture and heritage capital: a framework towards informing decision making’,3 which details the framework for how to assess value for money through robust appraisal and evaluation methods for the cultural and heritage sectors, looking beyond GDP. This approach will capture the value of the sometimes 3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/valuing-culture-and-heritage-capital-a-framework- towards- decision-making/valuing-culture-and-heritage-capital-a-framework-towards-informing- decision-making idiosyncratic and esoteric nature of cultural and creative businesses and services. The CHC methods have been applied in the assessment and evaluation of bids for the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund. A £3.1m research fund has recently been co-funded with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to expand the innovation around the methods with economic and humanities researchers.4 There are specific strands as part of this research call which will develop techniques around how people value emotions, spirituality, pride and non-use values. Over time, the CHC Programme will create a series of innovative outputs and products such as interactive maps, typologies for cultural and heritage assets, publicly available statistics, and guidance documents that allow for more nuanced and improved articulation of the economic, social and cultural value of the culture and heritage sectors in decision-making - in line with the Committee’s recommendation above. This will innovate existing economic methodologies and draw from the arts, humanities and heritage science disciplines. We recognise that place-based cultural, heritage, and broader investment is key for enabling local organisations, partnerships, and wider stakeholders, such as local government, to bring life and local communities back into high streets, town centres, and public spaces. As set out in the DCMS evidence submitted to this inquiry last year,5 the Government is already providing significant support to local and regional cultural and creative organisations and partnerships, and to local and regional government in order to galvanise place-based activity and achieve progress against the Levelling Up Missions the Committee has set out. For example, the £2.6bn UK Shared Prosperity Fund has a particular focus on Pride in Place and supports the UK Government’s wider commitment to level up all parts of the UK by delivering on each of the levelling up objectives: • Boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards, especially in those places where they are lagging. • Spread opportunities and improve public services, especially in those places where they are weakest. • Restore a sense of community, local pride and belonging, especially in those places where they have been lost. • Empower local l