Denton MP Andrew Gwynne discusses the government's 'levelling up' plan in his latest column for us.

This week, the Government is set to launch its long awaited ‘levelling-up white paper’ which is promised to outline a number of policy initiatives to transform communities up and down the country.

However, even before the white paper has been published, there has been murmurings and whispers that it is a profound disappointment. Earlier this week it was reported that even Michael Gove (the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) thinks his own report is lacklustre and won’t achieve what it set out to do.

There is apparently no new money, some vague restructuring of local Government, and a couple of essays to pad it out.

As someone who has long called for Central Government to give neglected communities the attention they deserve, it has been strange to see the Government co-opt the language of levelling-up, and then repeatedly fail to do anything close to it.

The people of Tameside have been promised so much by this Government, but again and again they have been let down. We were promised a new high-speed line to connect Leeds and Manchester, which was swiftly rolled back on. We were promised a task force to tackle health inequalities, yet by every metric they are still growing, we were promised a revolutionary white paper with investment, and policy and instead it looks like we are going to receive more bluster and spin.

Nothing illustrates the Government’s failure to understand what levelling-up means better than the issue of Russell Scott Primary School in Denton. This school was the victim of a £2.7m botched job from the collapsed construction giant Carillion. Russell Scott has been left with countless problems: faulty fire doors, obliterated playing fields, and inadequate drainage which leaks raw sewage into the school to name some of the most serious.

I’ve called multiple times for the Government to intervene to help Russell Scott. Yet so far, all I’ve received is warm words and absolutely zero assistance. Russell Scott should be the perfect target for some levelling-up investment. But unfortunately, when it comes down to putting your money where your mouth is, this Government drops the ball time and time again.

We urgently need to level-up neglected communities up and down the country. But we need actual policy, and actual investment, instead of yet more waffle.

We have been badly let down by the Tory Government here in Tameside, and it’s time for a change.

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