Wednesday 30 June
The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg yesterday announced that a £1bn Regional Growth Fund will be made available to support communities at risk of being affected by government spending cuts. The fund will focus on communities that are currently reliant on public sector jobs. The fund will be open to “private bodies and public-private partnerships” and bidders would have to demonstrate that their proposal “will bring in private investment and support sustainable increases in private sector jobs and growth in their area”.
Mr Clegg also outlined plans for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the business and local authority forums that will replace Regional Development Agencies. LEPs will tackle issues including planning and housing, local transport and infrastructure, employment, enterprise and supporting business start-ups. Other roles currently carried out by the RDAs will be led nationally, such as inward investment, sector leadership, business support, innovation and access to finance. LEP boards will be equally split between councils and businesses, and will usually be chaired by a local business leader.
Further details of the Regional Growth Fund, and the creation of LEPs, will be set out in a forthcoming government White Paper on local and regional growth. Further information is available from BIS.
In our representations to Ministers we are stressing the importance of protecting and enhancing CDFI services as these changes are made. The Small Business Minister Mark Prisk recently wrote to us to confirm that “CDFIs are indeed important and are firmly in my mind as we develop our policy”. We will continue to press home to Ministers that this has to be put into practice, across all relevant government departments.