Lukewarm reaction to LEPs from business
Influential Birmingham business leaders have given a less than enthusiastic response to local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) - the replacement for regional development agencies (RDAs) - in the week that submissions to run them were made to government. Speaking at Insider’s Birmingham Economic Forum, held at KPMG’s office at One Snowhill yesterday morning, business leaders voiced their tepid reactions to the proposals.
Lorraine Holmes, chief executive of Business Link, West Midlands, said: “My biggest concern is that some of the key functions we will need to drive forward the local economy are not at the moment sitting in the LEP proposals but have been pulled back to Whitehall; things like business support, inward investment and international trade.”
Steve Hollis, senior partner at KPMG in the Midlands, said: “It’s all a bit of a muddle if I’m quite honest. We need some kind of umbrella organisation which actually engages big business. If you look at the LEP submissions they do not engage big business.”
Jack Glonek, assistant director of investment, enterprise and employment at Birmingham City Council, said there would be less funding around but accentuated the positive. “We’ve got the opportunity to take hold of the agenda. We will have to do things differently but that is interesting…. There are opportunities so we have to be open minded about how we move forward.” he said.
But Argent executive director Gary Taylor, whilst applauding the enthusiasm around LEPs, said: “I think for the first seven to eight years, [RDA] Advantage West Midlands was trying to work out what to do. I fear that with LEPs we will go through another period like that.”
Authorities and organisations in the West Midlands have put forward bids to create six LEPs, it was confirmed earlier this week. These include one from Birmingham, Solihull, East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth and an overarching West Midlands submission on behalf of lobbying organisation Business Voice West WM (BVWM).
However, the BVWM bid, which some observers have suggested would create a body similar to Advantage West Midlands, has come in for criticism from local authorities. BVWM claimed it has the support of the region’s 32 councils but after Insider reported this earlier this week, calls from a number of those councils showed this not to be the case. BVWM has now agreed to remove this section of the press release from its website.
