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Welcome to the Chamber’s Local Enterprise Partnership interim portal. This is the central location to collect your thoughts, comments, etc – please feedback your position on an Enterprise Partnership for this area.
Eric Pickles MP, the Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government has told the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, that he wants to see Chambers take a leadership role within LEPs. He said “Chamber members drill down into the economic area and are the grafters. It must have Chamber buy-in for the LEP to work”
Current issues:
- LEPs are not mini RDAs. This Government has scrapped RDAs – do not try and re-invent.
- Focus on the “E” for Enterprise. How do you embed Enterprise in the community?
- The business community wants influence over planning/transport/skills and a tight focus.
- What is local and what is central?
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Online Forum
Comment on the forum will be placed here. They can email EP@thamesvalleychamber.co.uk to place their comments.
Dear Christina
I would like to support the Chamber’s proposal for a Thames Valley LEP as described in your recent mailing. I was at a meeting recently where Reading was contemplating promoting a LEP for the ‘Reading Diamond’ area. The economic strength of the ‘Reading Diamond’ area is significant and critical for the whole of the Thames Valley but is too small to compete with existing Metropolitan areas. Your proposal for a larger Thames Valley area seems to me to be a better idea. Infrastructure development is concerned very much with building networks or facilitating wide-area networks to function effectively. Reading Station re-development whilst the construction work is focused in Reading the benefits will be felt over a wider area and this has enabled the scheme to get widespread support. The priorities you have listed all require a fairly substantial critical mass if a wide range of effective and efficient services are to be provided in the future.
Reading SME – International Trade & Tourism
Dear Christina,
With reference to the letter you have circulated concerning a Thames Valley LEP. , I have since reviewed carefully the 29th June letter addressed to Business Leaders, and Local Authority Leaders and CEOs, which was signed respectively by the Secretaries of State for Business Innovation and Skills, and for Communities and Local Government.
In asking for proposals, I note that they say only that they wish a Local Enterprise Partnership to reflect a functional economic and travel to work area, and the natural economic geography, and that they would expect an LEP to include “groups of upper tier authorities.”.
They have given no clear guidance as to the size of an LEP which they might find acceptable. I have since become aware of a large number of initiatives being undertaken, at very substantial costs, for LEPs embracing populations varying in size from 300,000 to 3,000,000+, with only a very few likely to come close to meeting expectations
Tthe Secretaries of State believe that the functions of inward investment, business support, and innovation are best led nationally, clarification is needed as to what level of responsibility for these functions are down to the LEP.
It should also be pointed out that no reference has yet been made to how much funding, if any, might be made available from Government to establish the LEPs.
South Buckinghamshire – Private Sector
Dear Ms Howell
The Communities and Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles met with the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and the Federation of Small Business (FSB) to discuss the importance of business leadership and vision for local enterprise partnerships, which are intended to drive local economic growth across England.
The MJ’s inaugural Local Enterprise Partnerships conference, taking place on Thursday 21st October 2010 in Birmingham, is a national forum to discuss challenges and opportunities around the transition from RDAs to LEPs.
A key challenge will be engaging local businesses in the plans. David Frost, Director General of the BCC, and Mike Cherry, Policy Chairman of the FSB, will be discussing this issue at the conference. Representing local government will be Paul Raynes, Programme Director at the LGA.”
The MJ – Private Sector
