By Richard Johnstone | 25 March 2013
The government should learn from previous public spending reforms when it introduces the Single Local Growth Fund for Local Enterprise Partnerships, business leaders have said.
Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget confirmed that ministers would merge some current Whitehall spending on training, housing and transport into a new single-funding pot.
Allocations for the pot will be decided in the June 26 Spending Review, when LEPs’ bids for the cash will be based on ‘strategic multi-year plans for local growth’. This will implement one of the key recommendations former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine made in his growth review, published last year.
However, the British Chambers of Commerce warned that the allocations could be a ‘false dawn’ unless obstacles confronting previous decentralisation initiatives could be overcome.
The LEP Network, which brings the 39 existing partnerships together to engage with government and share good practice, was founded by the BCC.
Policy and external affairs director Adam Marshall told Public Finance there were questions over whether the plan would be implemented so as to allow the spending to make a difference.
He highlighted previous initiatives to pool and localise spending, such as the previous government’s Multi-Area Agreements and the coalition’s City Deals. These had both seen slow progress, and had made little difference.
‘We have been here before with Multi-Area Agreements and City Deals, so we don’t want it to be a false dawn,’ Marshall told PF.
He also called for business support initiatives to be included in the merged funding pot along with those already highlighted, adding: ‘It’s not necessary for every single bit of spending, but we would want an element in place.’
