LEPs need long-term funding deals, say MPs

26 Apr 13
The two-year funding deal for Local Enterprise Partnerships is too short to allow them to make any long-term investments, MPs have warned.

By Vivienne Russell | 26 April 2013

The two-year funding deal for Local Enterprise Partnerships is too short to allow them to make any long-term investments, MPs have warned.

In a report, published today, the Commons business, innovation and skills committee said LEPs needed more certainty and security. It called for them to be given a five-year core funding deal from 2015.

Committee chair Adrian Bailey said: ‘LEPs help drive the local economic growth on which national growth relies.

‘They are expected to deliver long-term growth. To do this they require the confidence to make long-term investments. The current funding commitments fail to provide this.’

The MPs also found that LEPs were not clear where responsibility for their work lay in Whitehall, as two departments were involved in the programme – Communities & Local Government and Business, Innovation & Skills. The committee called for a single minister and set of officials, based within the DBIS, to be responsible and accountable for LEPs.

Government should also be more active in monitoring LEPs’ activities and holding them to account, the MPs added.

LEPs should also be required to publish measurable indicators of their performance in a form that could be easily accessed and understood by their communities.

‘LEPs receive considerable amounts of public money from central government. Being free to react to local issues does not absolve them of accounting for how it is used. Value for money must be demonstrated,’ said Bailey.

 

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