RDAs had to go, says Clarke
Lord Chancellor and justice secretary Ken Clarke says he hopes LEPs will provide a more local solution to economic support than regional development agencies (RDAs).
Speaking yesterday at a lunch organised by the Birmingham Law Society to coincide with the Conservative Party conference, Clarke - MP for Rushcliffe in Nottingham - said: “I was always in favour of abolishing the RDAs.”
Questioned by Insider about what he hopes local enterprise partnerships will be able to achieve that RDAs could not, Clarke said: “Some things worked well but there must be a more genuinely local way of delivering things.
“RDAs semed to be more popular where the headquarters were - in my case in Nottingham. We are trying to make things more local.
“They [LEPs] need to be private sector led and, in my view, they should be larger than one local authority area. There should be more local variety in how they tackle things.
“The old system was unsustainable. They [LEPs] need to get back to basic principles of what they can support.”
Clarke also said that he suspects that government departments will take out tiers of administration at the local level.
