Come on now, Boris - level up!

The long-awaited levelling up white paper is here….and what is the verdict?

Well there are a lot of nice words, but you only get to do nice words once, now we need to see the colour of the government’s money…. and that’s the issue - it’s hard to see what is new money.

There is talk about investment and long term aspirations, missions and promises, but we live in a time of broken promises.

We were told Northern Powerhouse Rail would be ours, to unlock our much-needed freight capacity and open up the northern regions to the wider jobs market. And yet we were let down again, so will this be any different? And what can we do to change that?

Will Lancashire get a dedicated funding deal and steps to our own self-determined investment path?

Well we aren’t a Combined Authority, no mayor here, so we must depend on the so-called County Deals route.

We need to see that County Deals areas and their potential for the UK economy are not short-changed. And we aren’t at the top of that list, so far we aren’t even on the list.

So how can we change this? Well all our council authorities are in, all 15 are signed up, districts, unitaries and county, and that’s a huge step forward.

So let’s see the colour of their money.

To have a chance of commanding their attention though, Lancashire needs to step up too. It’s superb to see the National Cyber Force coming here, so now let’s pitch for the next big investment, and the next.

The time is now to show our ambition!

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