Investment zones are emblematic of a trend of centrally controlled interventions limiting levelling up - Tim Davies-Pugh

The scheme is emblematic of a trend of centrally controlled and fragmented funding interventions that a new report by Power to Change suggests is limiting the potential of the Government's levelling up agenda. To achieve its levelling up ambitions, the Government must also invest in communities, through the community businesses already working to make the places they live in better.

The refocusing of investment zones to selected places that need support to stimulate productivity and growth demonstrates the close alignment of this new proposal with Government’s levelling up aims of reducing regional inequality and promoting place-based regeneration.

Investment zones are clearly intended to support the levelling up mission of boosting productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector, but also reflect the mission to empower local leadership, through the positive recognition of the need for them to be shaped by local leaders who understand the needs and opportunities of their area best.

Our new polling suggests that levelling up is not having an impact in the minds of the public, as 66 per cent of respondents in the North of England feel that levelling up is not tackling key issues in their local area, and just 10 per cent feel that levelling up is having a positive impact.

Interviews with community business leaders also found that levelling up is too focused on capital projects, and disconnected from the people it is supposed to benefit. These findings suggest that the current vision for levelling up does not reflect the needs and ambitions of our communities.

To ensure that projects like investment zones create long-lasting benefits that can be felt by local people in the places targeted for intervention, the Government must empower communities to take the lead in shaping and delivering regeneration in their place.

The 11,000 community businesses currently operating in England can play a vital role in levelling up in their places. As they are locally rooted, community businesses are well placed to understand and deliver on the priorities of local people.

As local leaders and innovators who provide the infrastructure for inclusive growth, community businesses can support the ambition for investment zones to create ‘meaningful and sustainable inclusive local growth’.

They provide goods and services which meet the needs of their local community, provide decent jobs that help people to build their skills and employability, and strengthen social connections, which helps communities to reap the benefits of large-scale economic interventions like investment zones. We know community businesses work, and the Government should seize the opportunity to harness their strengths to level up locally.

In Yorkshire, community businesses are already generating economic and social benefits at a local scale. Bradford-based Solidaritech recognises the crucial role technology plays in the prosperity of a place, and the impact digital exclusion and a lack of access to technology and connectivity can have on people’s health, wellbeing and economic prospects.

They refurbish donated laptops and smartphones for use by refugees and asylum seekers in the local community who are facing digital exclusion. They also provide volunteering opportunities to people whose immigration status means they cannot work, equipping them with valuable work experience while building connections and contacts in the local area. Another community business making an impact is Leeds Action to Create Homes (Latch). Latch refurbish and retrofit housing to respond to the high level of housing need in the local community.

The amazing work of these and so many other community businesses working across the region demonstrate that growth is not built from the top-down but must be driven from the ground up - harnessing the strength of communities to address local need.

While investment in the region is a positive sign that the Government takes seriously the need to level up, it’s unlikely that a top-down scheme controlled from Westminster will be the initiative to help levelling up break through to the public.

Tim Davies-Pugh is the CEO of Power to Change.