The chancellor George Osborne has been peddling the rhetoric of ‘rebalancing the economy’ since the coalition came into power in 2010, yet for the first time in over 40 years there is no national programme of regeneration to address the needs of the most deprived areas. Furthermore, the agencies tasked with tackling regional disparities have been closed and many of their functions centralised.
Political arrogance and administrative cowardice killed neighbourhood renewal in England. A wealth of new research from the London School of Economics demonstrates just how badly ministers and officials under the last government dropped the ball.