Rishi Sunak is facing a backlash after pumping money into the south of England and his own seat in the latest injection of levelling-up funds.
The Prime Minister denied that the £2.1billion for more than 100 projects across the country was 'pork barrel politics' - and insisted the North was receiving more funding per head.
But furious Tories branded it a "f**k up of epic proportions" and raised concerns that wealthy areas were getting levelling up cash designed to help left behind areas.
Mr Sunak was heckled on a visit to Morecambe to promote the fund by a passer-by who shouted: "Lend us 20 quid for my heating bill, Rishi."
Analysis shows that seats in the South and London fared better than Yorkshire and the North East - stoking anger from jittery Conservative MPs worried the PM is abandoning the Red Wall.
London received £151million compared with just £120million for Yorkshire and £108million for the North East.
Projects in the West Midlands received £155million, while the South West was handed £186million.
The South East is the second biggest winner with £210million, while the North West comes out on top with £354million.
Only half of the 80 successful bids in England are in the 100 most deprived areas of the country, with wealthy areas such as Rutland, North Somerset and Malvern Hills, Worcestershire receiving cash.
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The Prime Minister's own leafy Richmond constituency in Yorkshire is receiving £19 million, with money going to Catterick Garrison to regenerate the town centre. Some £7million was doled out to tackle health inequalities in Camden, in Keir Starmer's London seat.
Tory constituencies also did better than Labour ones. Of 74 areas matched to a constituency by the Northern Agenda, 50 are currently held by Conservative MPs, 23 by Labour, and one by an Independent.
A whopping £1.02 billion is going to projects in constituencies held by Conservative MPs.
MPs laughed and jeered at Tory minister Lucy Frazer as she insisted that the second round of the levelling up fund would direct funding "where it is needed most".
Shadow Minister Alex Norris told the Commons: "Levelling up is a failure, the Government are going backwards on their flagship missions. They can't even appoint levelling up directors and today we see this reach its maximum.
"A rock-bottom allocation for Yorkshire and the Humber, nothing for the cities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Stoke, nothing for Stonehouse in Plymouth, a community in the bottom 0.2% for economic activity.
"But money for the Prime Minister's constituency, money for areas in the top quartile economically. What on earth were the objective criteria used to make these decisions?"
He said local government budgets had been slashed by £15billion in the last decade in cash terms while today's announcement hands back £2.1billion.
"They have nicked a tenner from our wallets and they expect us to be grateful for getting two quid back," he said.
Earlier, Labour's Lisa Nandy accused ministers of presiding over a "Hunger Games-style contest where communities are pitted against one another".
Several Conservatives complained that projects in their areas did not receive cash, including Stroud MP Siobhan Baillie and Keighley MP Robbie Moore.
Tory MPs also privately vented their fury at how the cash had been distributed with complaints it had gone to well off areas, including Mr Sunak’s constituency.
One told the Mirror: “It has been a f**k up of epic proportions.
“Labour’s attacks that Rishi wanted to take money away from deprived urban areas has come true.”
Another Tory told the Times: “People are apoplectic. There are some really wealthy areas on the list. It looks awful. It’s gone down terribly among red wall MPs.”
One MP added: “It feels we’ve given up on the Red Wall. It seems bizarre that Richmondshire is getting levelling up funding.”
Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said: "I am incredibly disappointed that our two Levelling Up bids were not successful.
"Both would have made a huge difference to two of our most deprived areas. If levelling up is to mean anything beyond a slogan, it must be targeted at areas that need it most."
It costs local councils an estimated £20-30,000 to compile a bid for central government funding and takes up staff time and "in some cases officers lose hundreds of days preparing the required documentation”, according to the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives.
Jonathan Carr-West, Chief Executive of LGIU, said it was a "crazy way to fund local government" which has seen its funding slashed over the past decade.
He said: "With competitive bids and the Government picking winners - there will always be losers. Well-resourced authorities with bidding expertise will be able to submit 'better' bids so the whole approach widens the gaps and inhibits a strategic approach to development.
"Meanwhile, other councils are putting huge resource and capacity into writing bids which they don't win. So money is diverted from other useful and necessary things for no reason."
Director of the IPPR think-tank Zoe Billingham said levelling up was on "life support", adding: "Today's announcements by the Prime Minister don't change the prognosis.
"Of course money across the country including the North is welcome to help try and lift this agenda but fundamentally what we're seeing is still very piecemeal, still competitive between places, tightly centrally controlled and not at scale. I'm afraid my diagnosis is not good today."
Northern Powerhouse Partnership chief executive Henri Murison said: “The North is getting roughly a third of the total amount for England, marginally below our first phase proportion.
“This is a long way off the radical economic transformation we were promised and will not make a material difference to closing the North-South divide in productivity.”
The first batch of grants from the Levelling-Up Fund saw £1.7bn unlocked for 105 projects in 2021.
But Labour said only a fraction of the cash had been received
Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove claimed on Times Radio it was "simply untrue that the levelling-up fund is concentrated disproportionately on London and the South East.
"If you look at the amount of money we're spending in the North West, it's twice as much per capita."
Asked if it was "pork barrel politics", the Prime Minister told reporters in Accrington: "The region that has done the best in the amount of funding per person is the North.
"That's why we're here talking to you in Accrington market, these are the places that are benefiting from the funding.
"We're delivering on what we said, we're investing in local communities, this is levelling up in action."
He argued that the North West and the North East were receiving the most levelling up funding on a per capita basis.
Mr Sunak said: "If you look at it that way, so you say 'how many pounds of investment per person in a region?', what you find is that the North West is the top region.
"The amount of money per person living there, who came top? The North West. Who came second? The North East.
"Actually, if you look down the other end of the table, you find places like London and the South East.
"The difference is huge. The funding that you're all getting per person out of this levelling up fund is twice, per capita, what London and the South East is getting."
The £2.1 billion allocated to projects comes from the overall £4.8 billion levelling up fund announced in 2020.
