Soon, it could be home to a young choir that has beaten all the odds to become one of the best in the world. More broadly, the hope is that by providing a permanent home for its 560 young performers it will serve as a catalyst for greater ambition and instill confidence in a city struggling to overcome its post-industrial malaise. A third of Barnsley’s children live in poverty. “It’s about creating equal opportunities. The reality is that a child born in Barnsley has very different opportunities to a child born in Guildford,” said Matt Wright, artistic director of Barnsley Youth Choir, gesturing excitedly towards the building. On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt will deliver his autumn statement along with the expected confirmation that some leveling bids have triumphed. Among the chancellor’s bulging frames is a £3.5m request to turn the building into an internationally acclaimed Northern Academy of Vocal Excellence. But optimism in the city is muted. While the level rise – the “defining mission” of Boris Johnson’s government – was certainly designed for the likes of Barnsley, the town is yet to receive a penny. Previous funding rounds have seen seemingly winning bids rejected. To make matters worse, the government chose to exclude the former mining town from the first tier of places most in need of help. It did not go unnoticed that Richmond, the relatively prosperous rural Yorkshire constituency of Premier Rishi Sunak, secured top priority status. Mat Wright MBE, artistic director of Barnsley Youth Choir, outside the academy building. Photo: Richard Saker/The Observer A sense of bitterness is palpable throughout the city. “It’s hard not to conclude that the leveling rise is about giving relatively small pots of money to newly elected Tory MPs to give them something to highlight in their campaign leaflets,” Barnsley Central Labor MP Dan Jarvis told the office of his constituency on Friday morning. “Regardless of the government’s political colour, they need to be a bit bigger and grown up,” he added, shrugging as if struggling to comprehend Whitehall’s continued dismissal of one of the country’s most deprived communities. Across town, Steve Houghton, leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Council, is in a similarly aggressive mood. “Barnsley were overlooked. deprivation is here, need is here. What are we doing wrong? Our offers are for young people, they are for their future.” This Thursday is seen by some as the decision on whether the level rise will be remembered as more than a slogan. It has been ten months since a white paper was launched, with the grand promise that it would ensure “all parts of the country share equally in our nation’s success”. Jarvis asks how this fits with Barnsley’s legacy of failed bids. In 2021 it tried to use the level up to improve its bus network, a move that was rejected without an “updated response”. Six months ago he tried another much-needed bus improvement project. “The government initially said £3.6 billion was available, a massive boost to the regional economy. We didn’t get a single pound. They were divided between not being ambitious enough and being too ambitious,” said Jarvis, a former mayor of South Yorkshire. Barnsley’s connectivity, vital for investment, is poor. Northern Powerhouse Rail, the package of regional improvements billed as a means of “supporting the transformation of the North’s economy” is now in jeopardy and under review. No details have been given of the commitment to improve the network between Sheffield and Leeds, which is crucial for Barnsley as it lies between them. The latest blow is the recent closure of nearby Doncaster Sheffield Airport. Jarvis says they submitted a freeport proposal for the site and that despite the Treasury’s own analysis scoring it better than some of the successful bids, it had been rejected. The deepening cost-of-living crisis amplifies the pain of every rejection. Failure to upgrade public transport forces residents into cars at a time of rising fuel costs. Much of Barnsley’s housing stock is damp and requires more energy to heat. The cumulative impact explains why inflation is 10.8% in the City, compared to 9.1% in London. Sarah Norman, chief executive of Barnsley Council, says Whitehall’s repeated rejection of her proposals is all the more perplexing when the town has proven it can thrive on investment. A shopping center – Glass Works – has revitalized the city centre. A focus on its schools has seen them rise from second bottom of the league table to above the national average. But students at the sixth form college say that despite rising standards, around half of their peers have quit to stay in Barnsley and enter a low-wage economy. “You can work at McDonald’s for minimum wage, but there are no good jobs here,” said Mason Goldsworthy, 17, who wants to go to university and pursue a career in cyber security. Norman said: “It’s about how we encourage young people in Barnsley to really think about the kind of future that young people born in wealthier places think is normal.” Building in Barnsley faces a myriad of challenges. The Center for Cities think tank ranks the health of 63 urban centres. It puts Barnsley near the bottom in many categories. The city has practically the smallest working-age population with high-level qualifications, conspicuously low productivity and a low level of innovation and startups. Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the thinktank, said the lack of entrepreneurial startups is a feature seen in other former mining towns and suggested the toil mentality of an employer may be embedded in its psyche. With the UK set for new austerity measures from the chancellor, Sweeney pointed out that Barnsley had been particularly hard hit by previous rounds of cuts. “Between 2011 and 2017/18 our research shows that local government was hit hardest of all government departments. Within this, urban local government in the north of England was hit hardest and within this, two places were hit hardest: Barnsley and Liverpool.’ Town center regeneration: Glass Works Square in Barnsley. Photo: John Morrison/Alamy The upgrade was meant to help repair the scars. The lofty rhetoric of the government’s white paper in February this year, experts say, was priceless. “Ultimately, the end goal should be to implement policies that will make a difference. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that this has happened since publication in February,” Swinney added. Brexit has also deepened Barnsley’s pain. If the UK had remained in the EU, South Yorkshire would have received £900m in aid, an amount the government has pledged to honour. Jarvis’ analysis shows that just £38m has been taken. Also disappointing to many in the region is the government’s failure to understand the argument that flattening the North would create greater prosperity for the whole of the UK. “Look at it from a hard business perspective. you have to do something about the north. We are underperforming financially and there needs to be an intervention. We don’t want to become a benefits town,” Houghton said. For now, all eyes are on whether Whitehall backs the vocal academy bid. What began as a social experiment in 2009 – confirming that global excellence can be forged in Barnsley – has become a test of the government’s wavering commitment to the North’s ambitions.
