A Northern Agenda exclusive! The winner of the Levelling Up Fund: consultancy firms 🥇 Plus John Stevenson MP and Keane Duncan

There's a big exclusive this week from The Northern Agenda as we've been digging into the process that saw hundreds of local councils bidding for cash to improve their communities as part of the Levelling Up Fund.  There were lots of winners who got £20m here or £10m there for regeneration schemes but also many more losers who put time and money into their bids and got nowhere. But it turns out there was one big winner from the whole process and that's the consultancy firms who helped our cash-strapped local councils write their bids. There's a huge change to local democracy arriving on April Fool's Day in the rural heartlands of the North. From April 1, in Cumbria and North Yorkshire the old system of district and county councils are being ditched and replaced by brand new unitary authorities.  Rob Parsons has been speaking to two politicians from those patches, Keane Duncan a senior councillor on the new North Yorkshire council talking about the hot potato of active travel schemes that prioritise cyclists and walkers over cars, and the A64, the road that's holding back North Yorkshire's economy. And in Cumbria we're hearing from John Stevenson, the MP for Carlisle who also leads the influential Northern Research Group of backbench Tory MPs. Rob asked him how Levelling Up is faring under Rishi Sunak and why quite so many Conservatives are leaving politics ahead of the next election. *** The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin. You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices