Leeds' trading chief has welcomed the announcement that council bosses are looking to set up a replacement for doomed Yorkshire Forward.
Gary Williamson, chief executive of Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce said that news that local authority leaders of the Leeds City Region have agreed to establish a Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) was welcome.
The LEP would replace some of the features of the axed regional development agency Yorkshire Forward - but Williamson hopes that the arrangement will be more of a business-led partnership.
Williamson said:
"After consulting with Chamber members the view is that there are a number of logical reasons why the Leeds City Region is a natural fit for a LEP, including the geography and the fact that the LCR Partnership has already made some progress in developing a strong relationship with the private sector.
"Many strategies for economic development have already been introduced as part of the LCR partnership, but above all it is a functional economic area, which for business is most important.
"Businesses very rarely limit their sales and aspirations to the tightly drawn local authority boundaries. It is a good day for sensible decision making and the Chamber will play a full role in what should be a business-led partnership."
Greater collaboration with business
At their annual general meeting last week, the 11 leaders of the Leeds City Region voted in favour of submitting a statement of intent to government in response its invitation to local authorities to form partnerships that will take on certain roles and responsibilities currently undertaken by regional development agencies such as Yorkshire Forward.
The proposed Local Enterprise Partnership will draw on the existing Leeds City Region partnership arrangements but will provide greater collaboration with business.
Leaders agreed that further detailed work would be undertaken to develop the proposal, which will identify opportunities for taking on greater powers and further responsibilities.
It was also agreed at the meeting that councillor Stephen Houghton, leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, would become chair of the existing partnership and be interim chair of the new Local Enterprise Partnership until such time as an independent chair can be appointed.
Councillor Houghton said:
"City region leaders have taken the decision to develop a local enterprise partnership for the city region on the basis that this is the level at which our businesses operate and communities live their day to day lives.
"We have a strong track record of working together across boundaries over the past six years and we look forward to working with business in the coming months to develop a joint approach to driving growth and rebalancing our economy."
'I refuse to be overly exercised by LEPs'
Leeds-based blogger Mike Chitty says he is refusing 'to be overly exercised' by the development of Local Economic Partnerships.
On a post entitled 'why we shouldn't worry about LEPS' over at his Community Development blog Chitty says:
"We know that they will have significantly reduced budgets. We know that they will be led by some concoction of 'private' and 'public' sector with a seasoning of social enterprise for good measure.
"We can be relatively sure that they will have considerable bureaucratic overheads - necessary to ensure openness, accountability and probity and that they will tie themselves up in the same debates about economic development policy that have raged with sterility for decades; picking winners, encouraging start-ups, clusters, sectors, creative classes, beautification, yada, yada, yada."
He concludes:
"LEPs will evolve. They will be largely ineffective in spite of the fact that they will be stuffed to the ginnels with good, committed, well meaning people. And in a decade they will evolve again. The sign-makers, website developers and letterhead printers will rub their hands with glee."
You can read the full post at the above link.
The Leeds City Region Partnership Board brings together a group of 11 local authorities (Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, Selby, Wakefield and York, along with North Yorkshire County Council) from across an area in which people travel to work and leisure to promote economic development and a better quality of life for our communities.
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