now on bbc news, panorama. the uk has a postcode inequality problem — where you live can determine your chances in life. ijust know that if we lived in the south, we would be getting more money and we'd be making more changes. health! wealth! transport! throughout the uk, so often there's the south—east of england and then there's everywhere else. so the government's on a mission to what it calls "level up the uk". you've got to invest in education. you've got to strengthen local leadership. you've got to make sure that the soil is irrigated for the private sector to play its role. and all of those things together will see lasting change occur.

but our investigation raises questions about how levelling up cash is handed out. a beauty contest around who gets the money, that's not really how i would do it. now, this northern soul is heading to south yorkshire to find out how levelling up is going down. give us the help, give us the hand up and the government will reap the rewards just as much as we will. you had community centres, you had youth clubs. there's nothing. breathe, five, six seven and... ..reach out get that emotion going, guys. good work. 17—year—old safaa shreef from barnsley is a talented dancer 17—year—old safaa shreef from barnsley is a talented dancer.

she's been taking lessons since she was very young. that's your homework on the table. yeah, piles of maths homework. she's also a promising mathematician and a climate activist. you find yourself doing what? hours every night, hours every day? you're recommended to do five hours per week per subject. i know i do four subjects, so that's like 20 hours, i probably do a tad less but i definitely do an hour or two every night. do you think things might be different for barnsley if you took barnsleyjust as it is and plonked it down in the south—east of england, somewhere near london? i do think it would be a massive change because there is a definite divide and i see as a young person walking around, we're not oblivious and i see it. and ijust know if we lived in the south, we would be getting more money, if nothing was different, and we will be

making more changes. it wouldn't still be the best place in the world, but it would drastically be different. barnsley is a labour—leaning town. it has two mps in the council. barnsley is a post—industrial town. we used to be a mining town. the vast majority of employment and the vast majority of businesses in barnsley relied on mining. most of that disappeared. so we're a place that's had to reinvent itself economically, reinvent itself socially. what does levelling up need to look like for barnsley? for me, its three significant facets to that. one is to make sure we've got the business and transport infrastructure we need. it's about how we deal with people and their skills and their confidence and their aspirations in life. and then the third aspect of this is public services. the poorest communities depend most on public services. barnsley is not a one—off.

many towns and cities outside the south—east of england also feel hard done by. in london, nearly £1,500 a year of public money is spent per person on transport. in yorkshire it's a third of that. in basingstoke the average salary is more than £36,000. in sunderland it's under £25,000. life expectancy in blackpool is at least eight years shorter than it is in guildford. after winning the 2019 election, and taking many so—called red wall seats in the midlands and the north of england, the conservatives allocated billions of pounds for levelling up. they're inviting towns and cities to bid for the cash. we have a situation where the south—east of england has been the economic powerhouse.

that has been unfair for all the parts of the united kingdom that have not had a fair shake of the sauce bottle. we need fundamentally to alter that. by the government's own admission, this is a collossal challenge. in this document, they say it'll require the same ambition as putting man on the moon, so how do they ensure that people in barnsley have the same quality of life, the same opportunities, as people here in london? to put it bluntly, can they actually do it? 7am, the outskirts of rotherham. so it's down hall road, through raw marsh. and how long does it take you? the most it's taken me is about an hour and a0 minutes. show me the way. let's set off. forfour weeks in december and january, 16—year—old

curtis yip, a member of the labour party, had to walk five miles to get to school. what have you got lessons wise today? i've got economics double, oh right. and then i've got politics. a local bus strike over pay meant a 45—minute journey took double that time and he had to do it on foot. five miles, that's 50 miles a week. i didn't know how else i could get to school. public transport is my main use of travel. so ijust decided to have to walk. there's no other choice. his family does have a car but his brother, who's disabled, takes priority. curtis would like to see better public transport. all the investment�*s down south, and there's a huge lack of investment in provisions, consistent and fair funding for young people

in south yorkshire. really nice to see you. have a good day. cheers, bye. the strike is now over so curtis can get back on the bus. but his experience underlines the lack of options in many towns and cities. henri murison, a former labour councillor, is the director of the northern powerhouse partnership, a lobby group for the north of england, set up by senior members of the conservative party. both getting from here to sheffield, which isjust down the road, the nearest next big city to barnsley, or up to leeds, as well as getting across to manchester, getting across to liverpool, is much more difficult than it should be. and the lack of connectivity means that young people growing up in barnsley don't have the same opportunities as that someone would have, say, growing up in south london.

the construction of the station will be a feat of engineering. the hs2 rail network will connect london to the north—west of england with high—speed trains. turning it into one super—hub station. which is fine if you live in the north west. but the eastern leg of hs2 has been cancelled. northern powerhouse rail is a rail network for- the north of england. and the proposed northern powerhouse rail, which would have improved the network between northern towns and cities, has been cut back. nicola headlam is a former government economist. something that has been

extremely controversial recently has been the scaling back of northern powerhouse rail and the eastern leg. and i'm sure you can find out better than i can why on earth, a government that wants to unite and level up would just so flagrantly ignore the views and wishes of the combined northern business and mayors and leaders and everybody who were brought business and mayors and leaders and everybody who were bought into a rail strategy that had hs2 in full both sides and npr across the middle. i think overall the amount we've been investing in rail, notjust through hsz but more broadly, in rail improvements across the north of england is at a record level. but there is more that requires to be done. put simply, through, the eastern leg of hs2 being cancelled, northern powerhouse rail being cut back, that's just bad news for south yorkshire and it doesn't look like levelling up to people in south yorkshire.

well, there are other investments that we are making notjust in transport, but money that's gone directly to south yorkshire for the improvement of its high street. for improvement of education. the challenge for many employers in barnsley is finding staff with the right skills. nice to meet you, i'm chris. pit stop productions produce sound for computer games and films. these are the titles that we've worked on. divinity, original sin was a huge success, as was the persistance. founderjohn sanderson wanted to set up in the town where he lives. set of headphones here. lots of headphones. what being here has kind of allowed us to do as pit stop means that kind of initial set—up cost was far cheaper. and in hindsight, maybe setting up in london probably would have meant we wouldn't have survived. at the time, for the equivalent facility, if we'd have set up

in soho, you're probably talking an initial outlay of about five million, whereas our initial outlay of here was 500,000. 0utlay up here was 500,000. ten times cheaper. the company employs 5a people, almost all of them with university degrees. we've got a couple of recording studios for music. this is ali. hiya. nice to see you. john, he's one of our composers. what have you got going on in here then? so this is where we do the majority of the writing that we do for films, video games, whatever we might be working on. we also mix in this room. it's a great surround space to work with. this is just the sort of highly—skilled business the government would love to see thriving across the north of england. ah, this capacity to transport you. absolutely.

i'm intrigued, ali. here we are in barnsley, where do you live? so i live in leeds, actually, just up the m1. originally from hertfordshire, so down south, just north of london. and then i moved up about six years ago to go to leeds college of music and stayed. so you've been lured from hertfordshire on the edges of london to do the most creative ofjobs here in barnsley. absolutely. john wants to grow his business, but says he can't find the staff from the local colleges in barnsley. we talk about creating better jobs. we talk about creating skills and a lot of these skills now that are needed are still not on a lot of people's radar. where i think the government would fail is if they didn't recognise that, because the jobs of yesterday aren't

the jobs of tomorrow, and there's so many opportunities out there. i think that one of the problems that we've had is that further education colleges of the past have been incentivised to get people in to do a particular set of courses which are easily sellable to students, but not necessarily valued by employers. what sort of courses? well, again, it will depend on the individual location, but we're setting up and i know it sounds bureaucratic and jargon—rich local skills partnerships, which are ways of making sure that either mayors or chambers of commerce can have more of a role in getting the right qualifications. if successful businesses like pit stop productions don't keep growing and offering good jobs, there's less incentive for bright young people to stay and thrive. ambitious young people are left with no choice but to go down to london or go out elsewhere in the world if they want to access genuinely transformational opportunities.

and the sad thing about that is that the thing that holds a place back is a lack of access to talent. so the north of england can't continue to bleed graduates, and other skilled people to other parts of the country and the world and expect to change its economy. stopping the flight of young talent is one of the main challenges of levelling up. so this is the urban tree film project, also known as the terrific tree task. that's the name we came up with. climate activist safaa is showing me her environmental project. so, how many trees are there here? so, over 450, all different types, you have some whips and willows and fruit trees like plum, pear, apple. it will be amazing in the summer when you can actually pick them. fed up with drug dealers hanging around the area, safaa and herfriends have tried to rejuvenate it.

just the sort of civic pride that levelling up tries to foster. but unless things improve in barnsley safaa sees no future for herself here. what would have to happen for bright, intelligent people like you to see a future in barnsley to want to stay here? i think we just need everything to just be better. like the public transport, it needs to just be better. our parks need to be better. 0ur safety in town needs to be better. the shops we have in town just be better. everything just needs to be up one notch. and then, you know, i might actually stick around. barnsley council has had to reduce many services, though. like other local authorities, it had to make austerity cutbacks following the financial crash in 2007. its daily spending on many services fell by 40% from 2010 to before the covid pandemic.

is there not a paradox here, though? because you as conservatives have been in power since 2010, and those early years of being in government were associated with austerity — hugely significant cuts in barnsley, in particular. is not what you're doing now merely rectifying the funding you removed earlier on in your time in government? i don't think so. i think that anyone who was in power between 2010 and 2015 would have recognised the need for reductions in public spending after the financial crash. but i also think it's fair to say that the government that took power in 2019 was a different government with a different approach to that which had gone before. since austerity, some residents have been relying on the goodwill of their neighbours. holden has tourette�*s syndrome. he has nervous tics and can't

always control his behaviour. we've gone through a million laptops, ipads, because he ticks, and he punches and he breaks them or he head—butts them. every single thing used to be a hassle and hard work. and by nine o'clock in the morning, i were already ready for bed. i've tried everything. we've got a tiny little park, but it's not very desirable to be fair. wyatt and his family's life was transformed when he started boxing. so these are the boots that i probably will be fighting in, the everlast ones. but my first pair boots were these adidas ones, the ones i were wearing when i were first sparring. what does it feel like when you get whacked round the head

with one of these? oh, i don't know. i don't normally get hit. that's the answer! i've never ticked while boxing, and i think i've had tourette�*s diagnosed for three years, ticking every day, and i haven't ticked once. i don't even know how to explain it. it's so weird, i don't even tick while doing it. it were like something were lifted. you could see in him straightaway. and from that second, he stopped, stopped twitching. it's made everything a lot, a lot easier. and he's got something happy to get up about now. so, yeah, it's given him a lease on life. and this is where the magic happens. jonny�*s gym in the middle of town. you can see all the energy inside here, you can even smell it in the air. tell us about the finances, how it works. i just charge the subs,

and then i have to pay me rent every month, that is what it costs me. i don't make owt. some weeks i'll lose money, and some weeks i might make a little bit. it just stays in �*t tin for weeks when i don't make owt. i have some help really some friends give me sponsorship. there's no help from the council, there's no help from the government? no. there were a lot of weeks or days, when i'd come and i'd sit behind the counter, and nobody came through the door. so i'd be wondering if i'd done the right thing, and then as you can see, it's built up, and now it's really busy. what is also really obvious is the effect thatjonny is having on dozens of men here, just how valuable a project this is. and yet he doesn't get any help from the council, he doesn't get government funding, and its left me thinking, is this not just the kind of project that is deserving of levelling up cash? levelling up cash is being

allocated through three main pots. there's the towns fund, worth £3.6 billion. there's the levelling up fund, worth 4.8 billion. and there's the uk shared prosperity fund, intended to replace eu funding, worth 2.6 billion. barnsley council got 23 million to regenerate a former pit village, and 15 million from a previous scheme for its town centre. that's 38 million. sounds a lot. but barnsley still feels hard done by. that is tens of millions of pounds of public money coming into this corner of south yorkshire. do you think barnsley and the surrounding area has had a fair deal so far under the branding of "levelling up"? in barnsley�*s case, no, i don't. i think across the north and elsewhere, it's a mixed picture. we had bids in for the levelling up fund which have failed.

even though we were told they were strong bids. we weren't even in the top priority list for the government on levelling up, when we're in, you know, the top 40 of deprived authorities in england. why do you think that is? well, when we went to the civil servants, they said, "you don't meet our formula." well, who made the formula? "well, we did." well, you need to change the formula, don't you? because you're not recognising where the real need is. levelling up is intended to address regional inequality. we decided to see if the most deprived parts of england were benefiting from the government's most valuable fund. the first round of the levelling up fund was worth £1.7 billion across the uk. we sent freedom of information requests to 100 councils representing the most deprived areas in england. we discovered that 34 of those councils, a third, didn't even make a bid.

of the 66 that did bid, 28 got no money at all. nicola headlam says asking councils to bid against each other doesn't work. once you're in a competitive bidding climate, you're inviting a much more subjective analysis of where needs the money. a beauty contest around who gets the money. that's not really how i would do it. why not? because in places that are doing better, they have a stronger cadre of officers able to write those bids, and therefore those bids are better. so those bids get funded, and it's costing local authorities money to kind of draw down this money. as a set of premises forfunding, i would go for deprivation first, worst first, as a kind of principle of seeking to level up an area. we're working with local authorities in order to make sure that their bids

are as effective as possible. and we're deploying people, levelling up directors, whose job it is to be rooted in those communities to make sure the bid is robust. there's no point giving money to a local authority if the prospectus they put forward will mean the money won't make a difference. mps on the public accounts committee have already criticised how areas were selected for another pot — the towns fund. they said the justification for selection was vague and based on sweeping assumptions without local consultation. stocksbridge is ten miles from barnsley. it got 24.1 million from the towns fund, despite being classed as low priority in the government's selection process. property developer mark dransfield was joint chair of the successful bid team. and this is where the first tranche of the towns fund money has gone in.

there was an advancement of half a million pounds, which has been delivered here to the leisure centre. and what difference does it make? well, we've developed all the car park area here. there's a playground at the back. it's really made a big difference to everything. stocksbridge had been a traditionally labour area, but it voted in a conservative mp, miriam cates, at the last election. has it made a difference, do you think, to stocksbridge, as far as government levelling up money is concerned, that there's a conservative mp here now? i think the answer has got to be yes, it has. ultimately, the reason why the money's here is because of the influence of the mp, obviously. and i think she's done an amazing job to do that. our community here in stocksbridge has been starved of investment for many,

many generations. and whichever politician came forward and offered what they've offered, i would imagine that they would secure the votes of our community, because wejust want to see our community prosper. we crunched the numbers on the allocation of the first two rounds of towns fund money across england. 80 out of the 101 places due to receive the £3.6 billion of funding are represented only by conservative mps, including 24 in the seats which the conservatives won from labour at the last election. nine towns with both conservative and labour mps also won. just 12 towns with only labour mps were successful. you know what your critics say, they say it's pork barrel politics. you're shovelling money in the direction of conservative mp seats. if we were interested only

in political calculation, then we wouldn't be spending money and devoting resources as we have to the fate of what's happening in greater manchester and the fate of people in birkenhead. so i completely reject the idea that it is driven by party politics. since the launch of the levelling up agenda, the world has changed. can the government's ambition to make the uk fairer survive the cost—of—living squeeze and predictions of an economic downturn? at a time when inflation is rising, that means that every pound of government spending is worth a little bit less in a year's time than it was last year. so it is a tough climate. it's tough for everyone. i think it makes it all the more important that we level up.

i think, unless we do everything in this white paper, unless we stick to those missions, then the cost of living issues that we face at the moment will deepen inequality. it is both much more important and also that little bit more difficult. last week's elections suggest the shine is coming off the government for many people. the desire here to see levelling up remains undimmed. now they want it delivered. the stakes are so high. london is a vital part of the political economy of the country. it's just had a bit too much of the attention over the years. but i think it is possible to share a bit of that wealth beyond the greater south east, and i think that other versions of england are possible. really nice to meet you. safaa might take some convincing. and she's not prepared to wait. i think it can be better if the people in power actually do something about it. i'm seeing this affecting every one of my friends, one by one, like an absolute domino effect. there's nothing bigger. definitely, 100%.

friday is going to a fairly windy day across northern areas of the uk, some rain around as well. 0ver of the uk, some rain around as well. over the next few hours, rain will be confined to the north—west of scotland, otherwise it will be a dry start to the morning for many, and relatively mild, temperatures between nine and

11. for most areas, brett david sunshine, the sun leather, latest winds and highest temperatures are pulling away from scotland but staying on the damp and windy side across the damp and windy side across the north—west. gusts into 40 miles an hour into northern areas of the uk. highest temperatures in the south, feeling warm. 0n temperatures in the south, feeling warm. on saturday, more sunshine to go around. it will be a warmer day for most. temperatures widely reaching the high teens to low 20s, the highest temperatures most likely across eastern areas of england. through saturday evening and night, we will start to see a few thundery showers move up from the south.

this is bbc news. i'm nuala mcgovern. our top stories: alleged war crimes by russian troops near kyiv — the un human rights council orders an urgent inquiry, and the bbc sees first—hand evidence of unarmed civilians shot dead as they walk away. translation: they| killed a 65-year-old. what for? i am not so much furious as full of grief. after days of violent unrest in sri lanka, a veteran politician is sworn in as the new prime minister. hundreds forced to flee from a fast—moving wildfire in southern california that's already destroyed dozens of mansions. biden's baby formula crisis — following days of criticism, the us president announces measures to tackle the nationwide acute shortage. and a trifle has triumphed in the search for the ultimate

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