Local growth programmes evaluation: foreword
A foreword on the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ commitment to the evaluation of local growth programmes.
DLUHC’s commitment to the evaluation of Local Growth Programmes
Levelling up the UK is a priority outcome for the department – and a central objective of government as a whole - with a range of policies, programmes and measures in place seeking to reduce geographical economic and social inequalities across the UK.
DLUHC is, in turn, strongly committed to using robust evidence to support the development, implementation, and improvement of all these policies, programmes and measures. Policy and programme evaluation have a critical role in helping us to understand what works and what doesn’t work alongside effective monitoring to ensure planned outputs are being delivered in line with agreed plans.
Such evaluation needs however to be robust – if it is to be credible - and comprehensive enough to all cover our key policies and programmes – as set out in DLUHC’s Evaluation Strategy published last year.
High quality evaluation evidence will enable us, ultimately, to better target our interventions, maximise the chances of having impact and achieving the desired objectives, including value for money, and reduce delivery risks by ensuring policies and programmes are well designed.
Without robust, defensible evaluation evidence, government cannot know whether interventions are effective or even if they deliver any benefit at all.
At the same time, robustly evaluating policies which target local growth can be extremely challenging - whether it is accessing the right data, working out the most appropriate methods including defining the counter-factual, or identifying beneficiaries. A starting point for our evaluations is therefore often a thorough feasibility study of data sources and methods to help guide the selection of the preferred approach – as our various evaluation publications illustrate.
Publishing our evaluations and engaging external expertise ensures transparency and objectivity in the work that’s done.
When designing monitoring and evaluation activity, we also need to be conscious of the input we require from stakeholders, ensuring that what we ask for is manageable, avoids unnecessary burdens and adds value. That’s why we have made changes recently to improve and simplify the way we monitor local growth funding and why we actively engage stakeholders in our evaluation work.
We have ambitious plans for policy and programme evaluation and are making substantial progress as highlighted by a National Audit Office review in November 2023.
We have already published an overarching strategy for evaluation of our local growth funds as well as plans and scoping reports for several of our largest programmes such as the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, Towns Fund and the Levelling Up Fund. We will continue to build on this progress in the period ahead, publishing evaluation reports and our plans for other policies and programmes such as Investment Zones, Devolution Deals and Levelling Up Partnerships.
These evaluation efforts are central to our determination to deliver impact and value for money from the substantial commitments of taxpayer funding that these policies and programmes involve.
Do let us have your comments on our plans. Our contact details can be found below.
Stephen Aldridge
Director for Analysis and Data & Chief Economist
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
E-mail: stephen.aldridge@levellingup.gov.uk
Will Garton
Director General for Levelling Up
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
E-mail: will.garton@levellingup.gov.uk