GBSLEP

Delivering growth: How!?

After a first read of the Strategy for Growth document the question posed by Jack Hargreaves comes to mind


Just How do you deliver jobs and growth? It’s a question George Osborne has been struggling with – closer to home so it would seem has the Board of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP).

As Paul Dale points out in his piece, the document makes a bold opening.

“We know historically there has been no shortage of economic strategies – yet none have fully delivered what they have promised. We will deliver.”

It’s the journey which is the difference, we are told. The

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Government must back LEPs with five-year funding deals, say MPs

Commons committee criticses Whitehall 'confusion' over regeneration bodies


Adrian Bailey MP

Adrian Bailey MP

A Minister should be given responsibility for overseeing Local Enterprise Partnerships and the Government must commit to long term financial backing for LEPs, a Commons committee has suggested.

The also said  LEPs across the country could not fulfil their regeneration role without the “certainty and security” of a five-year core funding deal from Whitehall.

Committee chairman Adrian Bailey, the MP for West Bromwich West, 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. We urge the Government to support LEPs in delivering long-term growth by committing to the levels of their core funding for the five years from 2015.”

The committee is urging the Government to move away from funding LEPs on a “one size-fits-all basis” towards

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Clancy launches ‘Labour red meat’ campaign to oust Bore

Birmingham council leader faces challenge from his own ranks


John Clancy has launched his campaign to become the leader of Birmingham City Council by promising to add some “red meat” to Labour party policies.

The Quinton councillor will challenge Sir Albert Bore for leadership of the controlling Labour group on Saturday May 11th, and if he wins will become council leader at the annual meeting later in the month.

Cllr Clancy is proposing a huge boost to council house building and would provide free school meals for all primary school children, funded through a major launch of Birmingham bonds.

He insisted his campaign would be about policies not personalities. This is not anti-Albert, he added,

However, Cllr Clancy stated that his aim was to ensure that “Birmingham feels like a Labour-led city again”.

His team has decided against challenging Ian Ward for the deputy leadership, which means that the campaign will focus entirely on the question of who would make the best council leader for Birmingham.

The three policies issued so far by Cllr Clancy, under the banner “An alternative vision for Birmingham” are:

  • A major, accelerated council house building programme funded by city housing bonds.
  • Programme of free breakfast and/or free school meals for all primary school pupils funded in part by social impact bonds.
  • Major council-led Investment in Small and Medium-sized Businesses across all wards in the city through business investment bonds from a Birmingham municipal bank and a remodelled LEP.

Cllr Clancy said he hoped to build 3,000 houses a year with funding from UK pension funds and other institutional investors. “We can’t just sit back and wait for the Government to give us money, we have to go out there and battle for it. Many pension funds are keen to invest in council housing because they see it as a safe long term bet.”

He added: “We have to seek out these funds – we can’t wait for government, the Tory LEP or private construction. We can’t wait for private sector construction to build, either. We need to do it ourselves, and partner with other social housing providers, too, to accelerate massively our existing plans to build homes.”

Commenting on his school meals initiative, Cllr Clancy said: “One of the most effective ways to attack child poverty and improve educational performance, as well as children’s health, is through ensuring every child in this city is well fed in school.

“Blackpool, Islington and Southwark Councils and the Welsh Government’s Primary School Free Breakfast Initiative have led the way. Birmingham should look to commit to this fully over the next three years.

“We can start with all pupils in the 135 primary schools across the city where the need for this is greatest, and look also at secondary schools later.”

He wants the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP to concentrate more on assisting small and medium sized businesses rather than helping “big retail and big construction” firms.

He added: ““We have to leave big commerce, big retail, big construction and big business to find their own sources of funds. Instead we need to seek out new sources of finance to invest direct, including taking shares, in small, medium-sized and micro-businesses, and remodel the existing Tory LEP to support them.

“We need to become a city of a thousand trades once more – through 100s of new SMEs and sustaining our existing, endangered SMEs. We need to step in where the banks have failed. Not just in hubs and zones, not just in corridors and belts but in every ward in the city.”

Asked what he felt he could offer, Cllr Clancy said: “I have the political will and the vision to get Birmingham going. It’s a bold vision to stimulate the economy.”

The Clancy campaign is expected to make regular policy announcements over the next three weeks.

Sir Albert Bore has been regularly challenged for the Labour leadership since 1999, once by Cllr Clancy in 2010, and has always managed to hold on. However, the amount of work put into policy formation by Cllr Clancy and his backers suggests that this may be a more interesting challenge than usual.

The path to local growth – or a cul-de-sac?

The GBSLEP bid to be the first LEP to recieve a single pot is thin on evidence - but bursting with potential, says Kevin Johnson


There is, quite understandably, plenty of positive coverage for overnight. But for Leveson shenanigans, stories about Lord Hestletine’s review, the recent work in Birmingham and now the to the original report would be the main UK political story of the day. Reasonable for

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GBSLEP hopes there’s a pot of gold at the end of Hezza’s rainbow

City waits to see if Chancellor will hand over spending budgets worth billions


Lord Heseltine (Photo credit: University of Salford)

 

As the last green-hatted remnants of Birmingham’s St Patrick’s Day parade staggered home through the city centre on Sunday, a group of more soberly dressed citizens laid out plans they hope will lead to the city’s very own pot of gold.

The culmination of just ten intense weeks of research and consultation, the drawn up by the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) and Tory grandee Lord Heseltine calls on the government to give the city region

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