With the Autumn Statement’s confirmation of the Shared Prosperity Fund go-ahead, we take a fresh look at the opportunity it provides to help shape our town and city centres.
Shared Prosperity budget
At the time of its Spring 2022 announcement, it was promised that the Shared Prosperity Fund would provide £2.6 billion of new funding by March 2025. Funding was for three financial years: £400 million for 2022-23; £700 million for 2023-24 and £1.5 billion for 2024-25. The majority of funding was revenue-based with a 89.6:10.4%, 87.5:12.5% and 82.1;17.9% revenue: capital split over the three years.
At first sight, the Autumn confirmation of the Shared Prosperity Fund go-ahead appears to include modest though significant changes to the timetable and budget profile. Funding is shown for two financial years: £700 million for 2023-24 and £1.5 billion for 2024-25. Analysis of the Office of Budget Responsibility figures conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), indicates that the £400 million from the current year will be allocated to 2025-26.
Correspondence received by a local authority contact the day after the Autumn Statement, however, appears to confirm that there has been no change to UKSPF funding. It says that the apparent omission of the 2022-23 funding, is down to how current year funding is presented.
Most recently, a DLUHC press release issued on December 5th 2022, appears to state that funding will be provided in-line with the original timetable and budget profile: “Funding for the UKSPF will be £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025, with this figure reaching £1.5 billion per year by March 2025”.
Levelling Up
The Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda and a significant component of support for places across the UK. The Autumn Statement also confirmed that plans for the second round of the Levelling Up Fund will go ahead, with at least £1.7 billion to be allocated to priority local infrastructure projects around the UK before the end of the year.
Place-based focus
The Shared Prosperity Fund has a strong place-based focus with its stated primary goal being to build pride in place and increase life chances across the UK. This aligns with Levelling Up White Paper missions, particularly:
‘By 2030, pride in place, such as people’s satisfaction with their town centre and engagement in local culture and community, will have risen in every area of the UK, with the gap between the top performing and other areas closing.’
A winning Shared Prosperity plan is one that works
Our message subsequent to the Autumn Statement is, whatever, the funding profile, for local authorities to have confidence to use the period to April 2023 to drill down on the detail and create deliverable investments with local partners for the following two or three years. The original timeframes for putting together a Shared Prosperity Fund investment plan were very tight and made comprehensive stakeholder engagement very challenging.
Here, we reiterate our call to use the confirmation of the Shared Prosperity Fund go-ahead, to focus on fine-tuning a winning Shared Prosperity plan with proposals that you believe can help underpin the ongoing revitalisation of town and city centres. This will involve skilfully managing the process to create lasting partnerships, build local capacity and create an evidence base of identified issues that can translate into effective interventions with measurable impacts to show success. A winning plan is not one that simply secures the cash; it is one that works! Below, we share our tips on putting together a such winning Shared Prosperity plan.
1. Drill down on what you can deliver for town and city centres
The level of people’s satisfaction with their town centre is identified in the government guidance as a headline contributor to delivering the key Shared Prosperity mission of boosting pride in place. Indeed, our earlier review of government guidance showed that issues such as the town centre business mix and empty shops are key components in monitoring pride in place. With broad priorities already determined for the town and city centres as part of the submitted Shared Prosperity Plan, now is the time to drill down on the detail with local partners and determine what can be delivered within the revised timetable.
2. Build your plan around place-based evidence
Develop the delivery detail in your Shared Prosperity investment plan from place-based evidence of need at the individual town or city neighbourhood level, with locally agreed solutions. Processes such as the LGA’s revitalising town centre toolkit for local councils, offer a recognised approach for identifying and addressing need at the town level. Where such town specific evidence or existing plans do not exist, buy time by including town centre action planning as a first step in delivering your winning Shared Prosperity plan.
3. Focus on partnerships as much as projects
Resist the temptation to rush engagement with partners even though the development and delivery timeframes seem short. At the strategic level such as district-wide, and the town level, focus on building lasting partnerships that bring together different knowledge and capabilities. Embrace the Shared Prosperity Fund’s guidance that emphasises the importance of a “comprehensive and balanced area-wide partnership as a core strategic component” of putting together a winning Shared Prosperity plan. Reflect this at the local level with town-based partnerships focused on coordinating and communicating activity for the duration of Shared Prosperity delivery and beyond.
4. Build capacity to deliver local priorities
An influential report on “building our social infrastructure”, cited in the Government’s Levelling Up guidance, recommends that “25% of the future UK Shared Prosperity Fund should be passed directly to community-led partnerships.” Take this guidance as your benchmark and use the Shared Prosperity’s Funds allowance for supporting interventions creating social capital (E9); enabling community engagement (E12); and building civic capacity (E11), to enable local capacity building.
5. Link issues, interventions and impacts
Both in putting together a winning Shared Prosperity plan, and its delivery, embrace and adapt the Fund’s emphasis on linking an understanding of issues, with effective interventions and impact measures. At People & Places, we have put together guidance to help you achieve this. In our new guide on potential Shared Prosperity interventions for town centres, we assess the fit between solutions tried and tested in using the LGA’s revitalising town centre toolkit in over 30 towns, against the Fund’s the eligibility criteria. Simply email services@people-places.net for a free copy of this guide demonstrating how to link identified town centre issues, eligible interventions and meaningful measures of impacts taken from the Shared Prosperity Fund guidance.
Find out more
Email services@people-places.net if you would like a copy of the People & Places Partnership’s new guide to managing and monitoring the impacts of shared prosperity as part of town centre revitalisation.
You can watch a video presentation covering the main points of this blog, prepared for the ATCM Roundtable discussion on town centre interventions through Shared Prosperity Fund.
Find out more about the Shared Prosperity Fund and the opportunities it provides for sharing prosperity across our towns and cities, or request a copy of our new, free guide on the Shared Prosperity Fund: potential interventions for town centres, from services@people-places.net.
Read the guest blog from Iain Nicholson, founder of the Vacant Shops Academy on a measurable response to tackling empty shops and the related blog on monitoring pride in place.
The People & Places Partnership are creators of the Local Government Association’s national guidance for local leaders on revitalising town centres toolkit. This toolkit includes practical guidance on approaches to post-COVID 19 recovery planning and levelling up, with a methodology that can be used in Shared Prosperity Fund investment planning and delivery.
