Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to publish (a) the baseline studies, (b) key performance indicators and (c) data sources that will be used by his Department to evaluate progress against the objectives for the UK Freeports Programme.

The Freeports Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) strategy sets out our high-level approach to evaluation of the Freeports Programme. The Department is currently defining the M&E framework in detail, including data indicators and data analysis methods required, in close collaboration with Freeports and stakeholders. Once confirmed, work will start on gathering relevant baseline data to inform the evaluation. To support data collection activities, guidance and templates will be developed for Freeports to be able to gather data in a consistent way.