A decade of post-Brexit regeneration funding: Reform and resentment

Over the decade since the Brexit referendum, Westminster governments have committed around £19 billion to regeneration projects across the UK - from new community spaces and skills programmes to transport links and improvements to town centres and high streets.

Public First undertook new modelling to understand where this money went, what changed in the places that received it, and how those places have voted since. We found that many of the areas receiving significant regeneration funding - often coastal towns and former industrial communities - remain deeply politically disillusioned. Even compared with similarly deprived areas, they are more likely to support Reform, suggesting that regeneration funding has not brought them back towards the political mainstream.

Working with the Financial Times, we also held focus groups in Blackpool and Clacton-on-Sea to understand how this funding is felt on the ground. Residents could often see that money had been spent, but struggled to say what difference it had made to everyday life. What came through most strongly was a pervasive sense of local decline, and a stubborn belief that things had been better in the past.

Over the same period, many of these places have shifted from the Conservatives to Labour and are now giving Reform some of its strongest support. Yet in our groups, we found little active enthusiasm for Reform itself; more a repeated disappointment with the parties that had governed before. A decade on, and £19 billion later, regeneration funding may have reached many of the right places, but it has not rebuilt political trust. 

You can read the report here.



And find coverage in the Financial Times here.

Banner image source: Francis Heathcote