The End of LEPs

By XrysD - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133523323
English Local Authorities

 



























Local enterprise partnerships ("LEPs") were collaborations between local authorities, businesses and universities to take over responsibility for local economic development from the regional development agencies.  They were established by the Coalition government shortly after it came into office.  I wrote about their formation in Local Enterprise Partnerships Begin to Take Shape in the NIPC Inventors Club blog on 21 Oct 2010.

In his Spring budget statement, Mr Jeremy Hunt MP, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a consultation on transferring the functions of the LEPs to local authorities (see Government Plans to abolish LEPs by Kwame Boakye in the Local Government Chronicle of 15 March 2023).  After an information-gathering exercise by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the Department for Business and Trade, the government published its Guidance for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and Local and Combined Authorities: Integration of LEP functions into local democratic institutions on 4 Aug 2023.  Central government funding was to cease and the LEPs' functions were transferred to local authorities from April 2024.

In West Yorkshire, the transfer of responsibility from LEP to the combined authority was presented as a change of name:

"From October 2023, the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (the LEP) became known as West Yorkshire Business and Skills."

However, as Ciaran Gunne-Jones and Emma Taylor noted in their article A LEP of faith? The end of Local Enterprise Partnerships in England of 26 March 2024 on Lichfields' website, different local authorities are making different arrangements with their former LEPs.

The West Yorkshire Business and Skills website gives details of a number of businesses that it has helped. They include coffee roasting engineering, printing and retailing enterprises.  Each of those businesses is likely to have brands, inventions, product designs and creative output that require legal protection. 

Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form, 

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