With a new government comes a new vocabulary. 'Regional' becomes 'local', because regions were too large, arbitrary and undemocratic. 'Development' becomes 'enterprise', because development is too complicated and implies the improvement of many social outcomes whereas enterprise just means encouraging businesses to grow. 'Agency' becomes 'partnership' because an agency is a quango full of public sector non-jobs, whilst a partnership consists of local organisations doing important local things.
Thus the coalition has scrapped Regional Development Agencies (amongst other things) and replaced them with Local Enterprise Partnerships. One three letter acronym (LEPs) displaces another (RDAs). There is one very significant difference between the two, though. The budget from RDAs over the past three years was over £6 billion. The budget for LEPs over the next three years is zero. Yes, nothing at all.
The government announced Local Enterprise Partnerships in a great fanfare, and invited areas to bid for one. Many did with great enthusiasm, sixty-two in total. Twenty-four bids were recently announced to have succeeded, and told they could now go ahead and form their LEP. It's an interesting situation, really. The government made LEPs into a competition with no stated prize, but because areas are used to being given funding for doing as central government says, they went along with it expecting a prize later. Now is it clear that there will be no money from government to fund the running costs of these partnerships, and neither will they have any new kind of legal identity to let them raise their own funds. By this time, though, local areas have put work into LEPs, and in any event want something to replace Regional Development Agencies. They have acquired their own momentum.
Whether this momentum is enough to overcome the lack of funding or legal power is another question. Without government support, LEPs will rely on local authorities and businesses for their running costs. Local authorities are facing severe budget cuts and businesses won't put up money unless they can see a clear benefit to them. This makes it likely that LEPs will be either simple partnerships, which have a meeting every few months but otherwise do nothing, or a very small team. Such a structure could well be adequate for the purposes of some local areas, who don't feel that the regional organisations need a replacement. After all, most of the current regional functions are being centralised back into Whitehall.
I am nonetheless a little baffled by the sheer number of roles that the recent government White Paper on 'Local Growth' threw at Local Enterprise Partnerships. Apparently, they could get involved in transport planning, housing, spatial planning, economic development, local business regulation, bidding for national funding, bidding for European funding, support for new 'Growth Hubs', infrastructure planning, managing the Green New Deal, promoting renewable energy investment, ensuring business involvement in strategic planning applications, commenting on national planning policy, encouraging enterprise, providing business advice, leveraging private sector investment (not my phrase!), tackling climate change, enabling the timely processing of applications for strategic development and infrastructure, responding to economic shocks like floods, working with Jobcentre Plus to create jobs through the Work Programme, regeneration projects, improving skills, and encouraging inward investment.
You might observe that it's quite a long list. Some of the activities on it could be funded on a project-by-project basis, but there is no money to set up a Local Enterprise Partnership or employ people with the skills to actually do those things.
Ironically enough, the government has also set up a Regional Growth Fund, which is neither regional nor about growth. It could more accurately be termed the North-West Public Sector Cuts Rescue Fund, as Lord Heseltine has said that the South and East will struggle to get any of it. Despite this, I was very amused to find he then commented in a speech that 'I want this Fund to do exactly what it says on the tin'. He might need to relabel the tin in that case.
But why should we care about any of this? Because without any regional or Local Enterprise Partnership-type structures, local councils will fall into parochialism. Planning will stop at local borders, which is a real problem for infrastructure, especially transport. Because as well as funding vanishing, a lot of expertise will be lost from the public sector as a whole swathe of organisations end and their activities cease. Finally, because I think centralisation will increase rather than decrease. Without some co-operation, however loosely organised, how can local councils stand up to government? How can they make their voices heard when the current conduits to Whitehall, the Government Offices of the Regions, are vanishing? I'm starting to suspect that local authorities are being tricked. The fact that local councils are getting the worst of the cuts sends a stronger message about the importance of localism to our government than all their enthusiasm about Local Enterprise Partnerships.
No comments:
Post a Comment