LEP faces a turning point



George Cowcher: a key voice on the LEP

At some stage in the autumn the board of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Local Enterprise Partnership, officially called D2N2 but otherwise known as a LEP, will meet to discuss its priorities.
While it has a lot of priorities at the moment, it has no budget and no full-time staff. So those priorities are going to be slimmed down.
There’s something else it is drastically short of, too: widespread support in the business community. Granted, some of the biggest corporate names have given it time (Bombardier’s Colin Walton leads the board), and Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce chief exec George Cowcher has been its main voice.
But there are widespread concerns that the LEP has simply not penetrated the psyche of your average business in the two counties.
I know from conversations I’ve had with civil servants that there are concerns that the wider business community has not bought into the LEP concept on any level.
I’ve seen a report drawn up by consultants which also says there is evidence that businesses don’t ‘get’ what the LEP is about.
In an article in the Post on Tuesday, Glenn Crocker, the chief executive of Nottingham’s BioCity, will say that many see the LEP as a “toothless irrelevance”, though he also says very clearly that he does not believe it should be written off.
There are three problems here.
One was identified by George Cowcher himself: businesses have got to wake up to the fact that the days of the East Midlands Development Agency, which had £150m a year to spend on the regional economy, are dead and buried. Businesses, organisations and sectors which relied on an emda funding stream have got to stand on their own two feet; there will be no grants to chase.
Mr Cowcher also tacitly admitted the second: the LEP needs to work much, much harder at raising its public profile. The £50,000 odd it has been given by government to support the development and maintenance of economic data is all well and good, but what purpose does it serve when the LEP is largely silent between board meetings?
The third is the contradiction at the heart of government economic policy. It wanted rid of emda because, in addition to wanting to save money, it did not believe a government agency should be leading business by the nose. Its view, which does make long-term economic sense, is that a sustainable economy is built around businesses which grow naturally.
But, as we’ve already seen, the central message from the organisation which has stepped into this void boils down to this: ‘We’re not emda’.
And if the mantra now is that businesses should help themselves, why will they vest time and money in the LEP? Look at what happened in the first round of bidding for the Regional Growth Fund (what was that about the death of regional economic policy?): one Notts business, Molecular Profiles, secured funding by making a bid itself. Not one of the 38 bids from the LEP - a body set up by government - was accepted by that government.
That may be because the local authority economic development people who give their time to the LEP were stuck in an emda mindset, wanting money for infrastructure, buildings and projects when the government was looking to back businesses creating jobs quickly.
The same problem cropped up in other LEP areas. So why was the process allowed to go so wrong for so long? All it has done is eat away at potential enthusiasm for the LEP concept.
The consultancy report I referred to earlier does make a powerful case for the existence of an organisation which furthers cross-county economic development activity and whatever government thinks about regional policy, it does believe business should have a powerful say in that.
Whether you feel strongly about government intervention in the economy or not, it seems common sense for businesses and local authorities to talk about what’s happening to the local economy, and for them both to make decisions based on solid evidence about the size and shape of the commercial landscape they operate in.
If the LEP is to mean anything, then it needs to be much more visible. It needs to hold events, to talk publicly, to get in the face of government, to produce the odd report – albeit within a sharply focused brief which avoids duplicating what other bodies already do.
There is another event in the autumn which could prove pivotal for the future of the LEP. It is the day when Government announces the results of the second round of bidding for the Regional Growth Fund (and don't ask when because no-one knows yet).
This time, £900 million is available across the country, and I know the LEP has made some hefty bids related to both business support activity and the tourism industry.
If those bids succeed, then the LEP has its sense of purpose.
If they fail again, then it’s surely back to the drawing board - for the Government as well as the LEP.