IT is over four years since the Northern Powerhouse initiative was announced by the then Chancellor, George Osborne.

In their recent report ‘State of the North 2018’, the Institute for Public Policy Research has revealed how little has actually been achieved (Echo, Dec 5).

The figures are damning: since the inception of the ‘powerhouse’, spending per head in London has increased by twice as much as spending in the North; Northern productivity is 12.6 per cent lower than the national average; two million working-age people and one million children in the North live in households below the poverty line; and many neighbourhoods with the lowest life expectancy are in Northern cities.

Our congested roads and railways are a national disgrace and our broadband speeds are in the bottom third of the EU, behind Bulgaria.

According to the Political Economy Research Centre, inner London is Europe’s richest region but most of the other British regions are poorer than the European average.

This makes the UK the most geographically unbalanced economy in Europe.

Mr Osborne’s talking up of a Northern Powerhouse now looks to have been no more than a cynical smokescreen.

For almost ten years, successive Conservative-led governments have let the North down badly.

We deserve better than this: a national rebalancing plan and some real joined-up thinking.

Dr Peter Williams, Malton