‘The common man's feeling the pinch. Feels more like levelling down to me'

Ahead of a white paper on the government’s flagship agenda, voters in Scunthorpe wonder if anything will really change

- COLIN DRURY

It is the government’s flagship agenda, an oft-repeated promise to revive and regenerate communities that have long felt left behind. In Scunthorpe, however, levelling up currently appears to mean, er, paving stones.

The Lincolnshire town of 83,000 people is exactly the kind of place ministers tend to have in mind when they talk of the need for rejuvenation: decimated by deindustrialisation in the Eighties, smashed by austerity over the last decade and, most recently, hammered by Covid-19.

Yet, almost two years after Boris Johnson first vowed to level up the country, the only sign of action here in Scunthorpe is £1m being lavished on reflagging the square outside the local council offices.

The Conservative-run authority says this government-funded beautifying – planters have been installed too – creates a more pleasant town centre which, in turn, will increase footfall and investment.

But not everyone is convinced. “A total waste of money,” says councillor Lorraine Yeadon, a Labour member surveying the ongoing work today. “All the things that Scunthorpe needs and they spend a million pound on that? Tell me how that will help level anything up?”

In towns and cities across the old red wall, similar questions are beginning to be asked.

With the government promising to finally publish its Levelling Up white paper this autumn – and Michael Gove appointed minister for the concept in the recent reshuffle – there is a growing disquiet among northern voters that no one, including the prime minister himself, appears to know what the term actually means or how it can be delivered.