This report examines why, after more than four decades of national policy, the UK remains one of the most interregionally unequal countries in the industrialised world. Drawing on the academic discipline of policy failure, it applies a common framework to eight major UK instruments – from the Regional Development Agencies to the Levelling Up Fund and UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
It finds that failure is not a series of isolated mistakes by individual governments, but a systemic pattern built into how policy is designed and delivered. Ten failure characteristics recur across every instrument, driving an “implementation doom loop” of short-termism, under-investment and institutional churn.
The report assesses the new devolution era introduced by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, sets out what the world’s most effective governments do differently, and offers a constructive, forward-looking agenda for national and local leaders.
“Local and regional economic challenges are long-term ones. Only long-term policies will address these, so we must break the cycle of short-term policy and institutional churn.”
Dr Glenn Athey
National government should commit to a patient, properly funded, cross-party regional settlement – allocated by formula, insulated from the electoral cycle, and designed with implementation in mind from day one. Local and regional leaders shouldn’t wait for the national system to change: they should adopt strategic pragmatism, build powerful, evidence-led institutions, set targets that genuinely matter locally, and deliver demonstrable progress.
Use the ten policy failure characteristics, including misdiagnosis of structural problems as short-term shocks, chronic under-funding, competitive “begging bowl” funding, centralised control disguised as devolution, and the absence of a long-term, cross-party strategy, as a design checklist for any new policy or institution.
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Meet the author
Dr Glenn Athey
Dr Glenn Athey, LPIP Research Fellow, University of Birmingham. Glenn is an economist and local/regional economic development specialist with extensive experience advising national and local government on growth, devolution and place-based policy.
Glenn has worked as a senior manager and leader in several regional development agencies, the Centre for Cities, and a Local Enterprise Partnership; and at Cambridge Econometrics.
Glenn currently runs his own advisory and consultancy business. His LPIP research applies the academic field of policy failure to the UK’s record on regional economic disparities.