Progress on levelling up in England has been ‘glacial' and – according to some metrics – inequality has worsened, analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed.

A report by IFS researchers found there was a 21-percentage-point gap in the average employment rate between the best and worst-performing tenth of local authority areas in the UK – the widest it has been since 2005.

The research discovered the share of pupils meeting the expected standards at the end of primary school fell from 65% in 2018-19 to 60% in June 2023, while the number of further education and skills courses completed fell by 14% during this period.

According to the study, the gap between the use of public transport in London (39% of journeys) and the rest of England (7% of journeys) was also at its second-widest level since 2002–03.

The IFS identified progress on digital connectivity, with the share of premises outside London covered by 5G rising from 67% to 78% between April 2023 and January 2024.

Report author Christine Farquharson, an associate director at the IFS, said: ‘The February 2022 Levelling Up White Paper was a substantial piece of careful thinking about the challenges of reducing regional inequalities in the UK and should heavily inform the thinking of any future government interested in reducing inequalities between places but, on many of the metrics that the White Paper sets out, progress towards levelling up has been glacial.'