This paper explores the experience of local planning authorities in the north-west of England in bidding for and delivering place-based regeneration projects through the Levelling Up Fund (LUF) and subsequent grant funding initiatives. The LUF was awarded by the UK Government to local authorities on a competitive basis between 2021 and 2023, and while the national political and funding landscape has evolved since, the experience continues to impact upon local planning and regeneration practice. The research process included an initial roundtable event with local authority officers from across north-west England, followed by three in-depth case studies of LUF projects comprising site visits and interviews with officers from Manchester City Council, Wigan Council, and Lancaster City Council. Initial findings underline the inherent pressures of bidding for and delivering on competitive regeneration funding, not least mobilising resources, and reconciling proposals with existing local policy priorities and at times fluid national bidding parameters. The evidence also suggests that despite this, the re-emergence of more distinctly place-based regeneration programmes is rebuilding and reworking some of the local authority regeneration capacity and skills which had been diminished over nearly two decades of austerity. This includes the knowledge needed by contemporary planning and regeneration practitioners to navigate the entrepreneurial governance landscape through which place-based regeneration is being funded and steered by UK Government.