Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions he has had with local government representatives on his decision to give Local Economic Partnerships primary control for strategic economic planning in places where there is no combined authority.
Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) have played a leading role in economic planning since their creation. Since 2013, each LEP has developed a Strategic Economic Plan for their localities and, between 2015 and 2021, we are devolving over £9 billion of spending through our Growth Deal programme. This will enable each LEP to deliver those plans – creating thousands of jobs as a consequence.
Local Industrial Strategies will establish new ways of working between national and local leaders in both the public and private sectors, with local authorities continuing to play an integral role in shaping their economies through their contribution to the work of the LEP. We expect each local strategy to be a result of extensive consultation at a local level.
The launch of the Green Paper, ‘Building our Industrial Strategy’, in January 2017, commenced an extensive period of consultation, capturing feedback to inform the development of the White Paper. Local authorities, along with key sector organisations, including the Local Government Association, responded to the consultation.