The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will revert back to its old name under Theresa May’s government and the first two years of Boris Johnson's administration.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner today confirmed that she will lead the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and signalled an end to “gimmicks and slogans”. The name has yet to change on GOV.UK but has changed on the department’s social media pages.
The department has undergone several name changes in the last decade since its creation in the early 2000s.
Originally named the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, it became the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2006 under Tony Blair’s administration before Theresa May renamed it the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Boris Johnson then changed it again to DLUHC in 2021 to give extra precedence to his flagship "levelling up" policy.
There have been rumours over the last few days that the name would change once again after Labour swept to power on Friday, with Rayner and fellow minister Jim McMahon now confirming this.
Rayner posted on X: “A government of public service means fixing the fundamentals to deliver for the British people. No more gimmicks and slogans, but the hard yards of governing in the national interest.
“The department I lead will be the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.”
Labour’s manifesto had alluded to such a change, criticising the Conservative government's “empty promises, gimmicks and gestures" which it said had "shamefully replaced the hard graft of governing”.
McMahon, a minister of state in the department, told BBC Breakfast that the phrase was "only ever a slogan" and was now being "firmly Tippex-ed out of the department".
"It is a reshaping of the department. It is a refocus, but frankly it is also just grown up politics,” he added.