Localism in practice

The last few Local Enterprise Partnership submissions will be winging their way to the centre for today's deadline. But civil servants have already been overwhelmed by the response. Even before the end of last week, at least 60 submissions had arrived.

 

Some are for substantial economic areas like Greater Manchester. But many of the bids will only cover a small part of the ‘functional economy’ – the area that businesses or residents would recognise as where they commute and do business each day.

 

And, as we will argue in a paper published tomorrow in association with IBM, this means these smaller partnerships will struggle to realise some of the efficiencies associated with working together across the ‘real’ economy on transport, housing and skills.

 

This is precisely what businesses feared about Local Enterprise Partnerships. Businesses are already concerned that local authorities are not listening to them, and worry that there will be too many organisations in a small geography.

 

But a very high number of bids was always going to be a by-product of localism. Taking a bottom-up approach means places take their own decisions about who to work with and what to work on. This is as it should be – each partnership should be focusing on different issues, depending on its economy. But each partnership needs to be worth the time and effort that always goes into joint working.

 

The challenge for the Government now will be to continue demonstrating its commitment to localism and steadfastly refusing to provide detailed guidance, whilst encouraging local areas to knock some of the bids into better shape. This is the only way that Local Enterprise Partnerships will make a substantial difference to local economies – and to wider UK productivity.

 

For local areas who have just submitted a bid, it’s worth re-reading the letter the Coalition sent back in June – because this is the piece of paper they’ll be waving when they start asking some local areas to think again. (and they are explicit that Local Enterprise Partnerships are an opportunity for local areas to cover ‘real’ economic areas).

 

For civil servants reviewing all these bids, the priority should be not just asking local areas to think again about geography – which too many places have been stuck on trying to sort out - but also about what their Local Enterprise Partnership is trying to do and how it can best create more economic growth and more jobs.

 

More on this tomorrow…