A BBC poll finds 73% of people in coalfield communities have seen little progress on levelling up.
Former coal-mining areas are falling further behind the rest of Britain decades on from pit closures, a charity has warned.
The BBC's poll of 2,426 people in former coalfield communities in England, Wales and Scotland found 57% felt there was a lack of suitable jobs in their area.Darren Wood, 49, who lives in the ex-mining village of Goldthorpe, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, said he had been looking for work for five years but "never hears anything back" about his applications.
"In that time some things have got better - land has been cleared up compared to how it used to be - but we see the gap widening between the coalfields and the other parts of the UK, the cities in particular." "The damage that was done - the economic as well as the social damage - was huge," he added. "That takes generations to pull back."Around 20,000 jobs were lost in Barnsley when coal mines shut in the 1980s and 1990s.
Last year Barnsley Council established an independent commission aimed at identifying and removing barriers to employment. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities took its new name straight from the manifesto promise that convinced many here to vote Conservative, often for the first time.
They will point to that and say the money will be used to improve local towns and villages - but it is also offset by the huge cuts over the last 10 years to local councils. The government said it was investing more than £320m in South Yorkshire, including improvements to high streets, transport, community hubs and residential areas.
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