Supplementary written evidence from Jim
Parke (ARSS 05A)
NOTE IN RESPONSE TO CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES
PROPOSED LEPS
1. The letter[7]
of the 29 June 2010 from the Communities and Local Government
Secretary and the Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary to
Councils and Businesses across England invites them to put together
proposals for the new economic development partnerships by the
6 September 2010. The emerging picture[8]
of up to 60 often small LEP partnerships being proposed includes
a number based on traditional County Council boundaries with the
County Council in partnership with their Districts. There are
a number of potential problems with this approach for strategic
planning purposes.
2. From our experience the irrelevance of
the County boundaries for sub regional and housing market area
analysis. For example:
the commuting across the North Yorkshire boundary
into "Teeside";
The County Durham and Northumberland County commuting
relationship with the "Tyneside" core conurbation;
The relationship of part of Wiltshire County with
Bath and Bristol—commuting from the Trowbridge area;
The Wiltshire relationship with the "Southampton/Portsmouth"
conurbation—commuting from Salisbury;
The Plymouth relationship with the eastern parts
of Cornwall—Saltash, Torpoint and Liskeard in the former
Caradon District; and
The Warwickshire relationship with the West Midlands
conurbation.
3. In addition, it is also worth drawing
to the attention of the Committee our experience of the availability
of technical resources held by the Counties despite the withdrawal
of their Structure Plan responsibilities. At a time of financial
stringency these resources could be reallocated to the new sub-regional
organisations in order to facilitate the updating of the data
and research collated by the now-abolished Regional Local Authority
Leaders' Boards. For example the resources of Gloucestershire
CC, Durham CC, Devon CC and Warwickshire CC.
CONCLUSIONS
The emerging Local Enterprise Partnerships, many
of which are being proposed based on traditional County boundary
areas, are too small to be able to take a proper strategic view.
From our experience in the South West and elsewhere
the extent of the Housing Market Areas are greater than the grouping
of Metropolitan Authorities and individual Urban Authorities.
The existing County Councils may well have technical
planning resources that could be reallocated to the new sub-regional
bodies to allow them to inherit the work of the Regional Local
Authority Leaders' Boards and carry out further data collection
and research
September 2010
7 http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/regional/docs/10-1026-final-letter-local-enterprise-partnerships.pdf Back
8
http://www.lgcplus.com/5018558.blog
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