Manchester and Liverpool miss out on £60m Levelling Up Fund cash 

Morecambe will be getting money for it`s “Eden Project”, did they vote Tory in the last election?

Clearly an anti city agenda going on here. Levelling up provides no funding to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Nottingham. But Richmond in North Yorkshire got funding! I wonder why?

Seems a bit odd to me that you have to bid for something to benefit your area? does TFL have to do this with the vast amount that gets spent on Crossrail? Silvertown Tunnel? Seems like a desperate plea to make you forget the 12 years of Tory

I note the article in the times noting that significantly more money from the levelling up budget has gone the the south east than the north . Also a lot more to richer council areas (controlled by conservatives) than to more deprived councils . So much for levelling up !

Hi George – just worth noting that by our calculations the South (South East, South West, and London) secured around £548m. The North (North West, North East, Yorkshire) netted around £584m. – J

January 19, 2023 at 8:36 am

By Julia Hatmaker

Should be called “the Levelling up Lottery”, and for some they`ve probably got more chance of winning The National Lottery. Why waste peoples time and energy working up these bids when most hardly get a look in. I thought the Liverpool bid for Great Homer Street was flimsy and not convincing, as this popular market only operates at weekends . It was as if some local councillor dreamed it up and thought cos` we submit under the heading of “Community Market” that would bring it home.

Rishi Sunak’s constituency won £19m while Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Council with a much larger population lost out.

Bolton voted Tory in last election and has the only Tory council in Greater Manchester yet still gets nothing from a Tory government

The rejection of the Paddington South bid is Particularly galling as this is one of the main drivers for regeneration and employment in the LCR. The petty distribution of funds seemingly based on Political bias really sums up the inefficiency of the present government in determing economic development for the UK.

Chorley never gets anything because we have Lindsay Hoyle as our MP, as Speaker other parties do not stand against him at elections – therefore there are no votes to buy.

What a shock that Liverpool & Manchester didn’t get any money from the tories lol

I am a frequent visitor to Richmond for work purposes. A more beautiful, historic and prosperous corner of England it would be hard to find. The government’s decision comes dangerously close to pork-barrelling.

No shock there

Manchester has levelled itself up.Liverpool with proper governance ,should also have no difficulty. in doing the same, and Warrington is booming. The places which got money are the places struggling in the North West. Morecambe looks like a town in rural Bulgaria, poor shops, run down side streets,no amenities . A nice view from the promenade and a statue of Eric, is not enough to get people to visit it, and spend money. The town should be thriving, as it is close to both the Lakes and Dales. This Eden project plan, will transform its economy.

wow Manchester not getting exactly what it wants from the Goverment, I’m shocked! Liverpool being rejected… not so surprising. “managed decline” continues

How is it “levelling up” when the south gets the same funding as the north :’) surely that’s maintaining the gap

@MB The South also has a lot of poor areas which are often overlooked in their regions eg Portsmouth (often described as a northern city in the south), Southampton, parts of Bournemouth (Boscombe is as sad as any run down areas I’ve seen in the north), the unglamorous ex-industrial and coastal parts of Kent and Essex, etc. Levelling Up is never just a north project, important though that definitely is.

There is this myth, that it is all strawberries and cream in the South. Cornwall and the Isle of Wight are the two poorest parts of England. North Yorkshire and East Cheshire are as wealthy as the wealthiest parts of the South East. London is the place which gets all the investment, not the wider South, London is in the South. People in Devon have the same rubbish trains, we have. Does anyone really think that people in Gravesend are better off than people living in South Manchester? You have access to better jobs in the North West, than the South West. The difference is we have the scars of our industrial past, which makes our towns look shabby. The North West is still the third richest region in the U.K. and growing daily.

The point of the Levelling Up Fund was to give money to places that were always missing out. Big cities like Manchester and Liverpool have received huge amounts of cash in the past. It’s about time the smaller places got something.

@Elephant, No Manchester has not ‘levelled itself up’, not sure how you’ve come to that conclusion, but the evidence shows that the most deprived areas in the country are disproportionately located within Greater Manchester, we lag behind many similar size cites across the Europe despite out relative national wealth and these contrasts are stark once you visit beyond the 2qm radios that is the city centre and a small few suburbs, vast majority of Greater Manchester falls in the lower quartile in the Indices of Multiple deprivation and this has gone progressively worse since 2011 and the Tories.

Liverpool misses out on Levelling Up funding again under the Tories, but would Labour really make much difference. Liverpool were almost home and dry some years ago when they tried to get their tram network built but at the last minute the money was pulled by Alistair Darling. Liverpool had spent £70 million buying the tracks and were left holding an expensive baby, when the tram would have been a major asset to the city`s transport network.

Middleton and Heywood’s bid rejected, despite having a Tory MP with a majority in the low hundreds who was largely elected on the levelling up agenda. He might be looking for a new job soon!

I agree with Elephant. Manchester is doing a pretty good job of levelling itself up. The more the city can distance itself with this terrible.tory government, the better

Half agree with Elephant. The more Manchester prospers to more it will look like London, and every that goes with that. Like knowing that within a mile of thriving world financial hub there will be some of most deprived people in the UK, similarly if Salford Quays thrives it not necessarily transforming the lives of working class people in Ordsall. The thing I worry about is not just the contrasting fortunes in the same place, it’s that inner core of GM is going to build a massive cluster of mainly young graduate professionals who went they hit family formation are going to find the outer boroughs of GM have not built enough housing to take them. They will out compete the locals, and that will create a lot of tension. In that sense I think Places for Everyone is too timid, not too bold. As for Liverpool it needs a Kung Fu Panda moment – there is no secret sauce, the person who can make the difference is the one you see in the mirror everyday. The Tories will never give you the money, the Labour Party has to fix the NHS, trains, and other broken stuff.

Some nonsense being talked on here by people with short memories hoping for a glorious revolution that was never here and will never come. Manchester has greatly prospered in the last 25 yrs or so but mostly thanks to its own efforts. Not just the buildings but the higher paid high tech jobs and the infrastructure too. Liverpool a little less so but for the same reasons. The North south divide is not an easy one to cross and that will prove the case whichever of our lords and masters occupy number 10. Always has. MPs are the ultimate seagull managers, they fly in for a short time , make a lot of noise , dump on everyone and then are gone. Real long term power exists elsewhere, in the many many non governmental bodies ,financial institutions and Civil service that actually run this great game regardless of what colour or political persuasion they pretend they are. Change can come, look at Scotland, if you must, different circumstances but the levers of power can be pulled. I’m not convinced however we have enough hands pulling in the same direction.

I know about Manchester’s statistics anonymous, in comparison to other European cities and you are right. I wish Manchester and Liverpool ,looked like Lyons and Vienna but they don’t, so we have to be creative and work with what we have, which is a bag of peanuts in comparison to what those cities would get in infrastructure investment from their governments . The biggest problem in our regional cities remains transport. Until this is properly addressed, we will continue to lag behind our European equivalents. George Osborne’s plan of creating a fast integrated rail network between Liverpool, Manchester, Manchester airport and Leeds, was the best policy from any government since the war for the North, creating a mega city and allowing millions of people access to jobs, quickly. Again this policy has been woefully underfunded and we are still waiting more than a decade after it was agreed for spades in the ground.

Did Cheshire East make a bid? Are we eligible for levelling up? – we are part of the North West. I am serious about believing that since the split of Cheshire, it is regarded as “serving” Manchester and Liverpool, and that it is becoming a county of dormitory towns.