Salford should be a top priority for levelling up, a research centre has said.
The Institute for Community Studies has called on the government to recategorise six places in the North to be prioritised for the funding.
The think tank published a report which criticises successive governments for 'consistently' failing to tackle inequalities in the most deprived communities.
It comes as the Prime Minister set out his vision for levelling up the UK in an hour-long speech on Thursday (July 15) which was criticised for lacking detail.
The London-based research centre's report, which launched last week, looks at 20 years of local economic interventions, claiming £50bn of investment has resulted in 0 pc average change in the most deprived local authority areas.
This year, local authorities have been submitting bids for the government's £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund for which the first round deadline was last month.
Salford council submitted two bids – one for each parliamentary constituency.
A £14.6m bid was put forward for a 'boulevard in the sky' which would connect the University of Salford's campus to the wider 'Innovation Zone'.
A second bid of around £5m was submitted for road infrastructure which would open up 13 acres of land around the AJ Bell Stadium for development.
However Salford, which is among the most deprived local authority areas in the country, is currently a 'Category 2' council, which means, unlike the rest of Greater Manchester, its bids will not be a top priority for the government fund.
Richard Harries, associate director at the Institute for Community Studies, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the government risks repeating mistakes which have been made in the past with regeneration programmes.
"The government hasn't been clear what its priorities are for levelling up," he said. "And because it's not clear about what its priorities are, the methodology it came up with for these three levels of priority are equally unclear."
Local authorities were assessed according to productivity, unemployment and skills together with commuting times and the proportion of empty properties.
Harries says factors such as transport connectivity favour more rural areas.
This could explain why somewhere like Salford is a second priority, while part of Chancellor Rishi Sunak's constituency of Richmond is a Category 1 council.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government defended the published methodology used for the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund, saying it 'makes clear' the metrics used to identify places judged to be most in need.
An MHCLG spokersperson said the fund is open to all places in Great Britain and will play a 'vital role' in helping to support and regenerate communities.
But Harries is not criticising the government for a lack of transparency – he simply says ministers have not yet explained what levelling up looks like.
"The way they constructed the index is really very straightforward," he said.
"It's a very blunt instrument.
"In a sense, I'm not criticising it because the government has been very open – they haven't hidden the ball here. They've said, 'this is how we're going to measure what we think levelling up is'. What they haven't provided is an explanation of why those three factors in summary represent levelling up."
Indices of multiple deprivation, which Harries says are the 'best measure' of how deprived an area is, point to the places where funding should be prioritised.
It's for this reason he says Salford, where many neighbourhoods are among the most deprived in the country, should be a top priority for levelling up.
But deprivation alone does not tell you how to select schemes for funding.
The Institute for Community Studies' report titled 'Why don't they ask us?' claims community involvement in decisions is key to successful regeneration.
"The critical thing here is you've got to move away from a mindset of consultation," Harries said. "It's got to be genuine engagement.
"It's not just posting something on a website or a telephone pole and expecting someone to respond to it.
"You've got to be working permanently with and in communities."
The associate director argues that 'local strategic partnerships' should be put back in place and community voices should be playing a central part in them.
He claims that these forums which aim to address local problems, allocate funding, and discuss strategies and initiatives, became too 'top down'.
And he draws on examples during the pandemic where places with more community-owned assets – such as swimming pools, village halls and community hubs – were found to be more likely to form mutual aid groups.
"And that makes complete sense," he said. "People wanted to do something, but you need a physical space to do it in.
"And so those areas where councils have transferred properties into community hands are more likely to form mutual aid groups.
"That's the way that you engage communities. You give them support both in terms of their voice, but also having a place to meet as well."
The creation of combined authorities and metro mayors, such as Andy Burnham, could help communities start to take power back, Harries says.
But the key thing is to make sure that power is passed down to communities.
The Institute for Communities Studies has called on the two ministers who are most involved in the levelling up agenda to be part of a responsible committee and report back publicly on how they are engaging with communities.
Harries says rather than top-down rule, local and central government should be drawing on the 'hidden resource' of passionate people in communities.
He makes this precise point when responding to Boris Johnson's speech in which the Prime Minister set out a 'skeleton of a plan' for levelling up the UK.
"The Prime Minister said 'Come to us with a plan and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better.’ That is exactly backward.
"After decades of failed top-down rule from the centre, the government needs to accept that it does not have the tools to make places better.
"Those tools already lie in the hands of local people and local councils.
"Instead of treating the world beyond Whitehall as supplicants to be patronised, we need a government that unleashes the power of local places."
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