Levelling Up – The North Is Already Several Steps Ahead

By James Forrester, Managing Director – Barrows & Forrester
 
On 15 September 2021 Prime Minister Boris Johnson reshuffled his ministerial pack and pulled out Michael Gove MP as the new Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government who then promptly renamed his brief the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Gove therefore becomes the ultimate arbiter of all things housing, planning and levelling up.
But what on earth is levelling up, you ask? And does it affect me as a businessperson?
I’ll come back to that shortly but let me start with the answer to a more important question… from a property sector perspective, what are the implications of Michael Gove taking this role?
Well, Gove is a beast. He’s a two-time Conservative Party leadership contender and was a founding member of the ‘Brexit club’ alongside Boris Johnson and became a prominent figure in the successful campaign to extricate Britain from the EU, against the odds some would...