In the run up to this year’s General Election, the Conservative Party promoted the idea of ‘localism’ over the ‘regionalism’ agenda that had been pursued by the Labour government for thirteen years.
Since forming a new government with their coalition partners in May, the Tories have been quick to announce the abolition of Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices in the regions. We are now embarking on the creation of new structures to support strategic planning and the co-ordination of public and private investment in transport, housing, skills, regeneration and other areas of economic development.
Local authorities have been asked to submit proposals for new Local Economic Partnerships (LEP’S) in their own areas, and bids have to be in by September 6th. Whilst Liverpool and Manchester push ahead with proposals that will see a single city-region wide LEP established in Merseyside and Greater Manchester, Lancashire council’s have once again decided to indulge in turf wars. Incredibly, there was talk of up to five LEP’s covering the red rose county, with Pennine Lancashire, the Fylde Coast and two further LEP’s being formed in Central Lancashire. To add to the chaos, there were rumours that Lancaster is about to throw it’s hat in the ring with Cumbria.
Lancashire County Council have proposed a single LEP covering its administrative boundary, an option supported by the vast majority of businesses across the county, but rejected by local politicians.
How they can justify the creation of a series of relatively small and therefore ineffective bodies that will appear overly bureaucratic and duplicitous to the business community; struggle to have a strategic vision and inevitably fail to compete with better co-ordinated and larger LEP’s elsewhere in the North West is beyond me. For ‘localism’ in Lancashire read ‘parochialism’. That is not what is required and surely not what the government intended.
I hope that business organisations across the county articulate the views of their members and the wider business community, rather than falling into line with a short sighted policy in the hope of getting their hands on some of the cash that will come the way of LEP’s in the future. The debate should be about the growth of Lancashire and how that is best achieved – not the building of empires in either the private or public sectors.