LEPs need to collaborate on funding bids, says director
LEPs should be able to bid for joint funding for major projects. That’s according to Matthew Clifton, the assistant director of the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) bid. Clifton told Insider that co-operation between the partnerships would be ‘key’ to their success. He also said that the councils and businesses behind the proposal were “confident” that it would be accepted, following their visit to Whitehall as part of an LEP inquiry on Tuesday.
The partnership is a venture between the Boroughs of Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Luton, Aylesbury Vale in Buckinghamshire and the districts of South Northamptonshire, Daventry and Cherwell in Oxfordshire.
Clifton said that although the inquiry process – in which leaders from ten proposed partnerships across the country were called to give evidence of their submissions – “did not imply that the South East Midlands was accepted by any means”, the group remained confident that it would be accepted.
He said that the group of MPs at Whitehall were “interested in hearing from a representative selection of the 57 proposals – some were large, some were small, and the panel really wanted to see how they would work with local businesses.”
“It was a very useful experience to get behind the thinking and the motivation of some of these proposals.”
Clifton also highlighted the potential for cross-border funding between the LEP bodies.
“I think there should be some scope for the LEPs to bid for funding for joint projects which will affect more that one area”, he said. “For issues like transport, for instance, it is likely that more than one LEP will be covering the affected area.”
He also revealed that the government had given the prospective partnerships no indication about when they would find out if their bid was one of the chosen successes.
“I think we will find out after [Tuesday’s] Spending Review”, said Clifton. “It will more likely come just after the White Paper on National Economic Development, which is due later this year.”
