Background to the report
Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) are private sector led
partnerships between businesses and local public sector bodies.
They were established in 2011 to drive economic growth in local
areas. There are 38 LEPs in England, each operating across more
than one local authority. The government has committed £12
billion to local areas in England between 2015-16 and 2020-21. Of
this, £9.1 billion has already been allocated through Growth
Deals negotiated between central government and individual LEPs.
This report has been prepared to update the Committee of Public
Accounts (the Committee) on the work of LEPs and the Ministry of
Housing, Communities & Local Government (the Department) to
address previous National Audit Office (NAO) report
recommendations that focused on value-for-money issues; and the
Committee’s recommendations on governance and transparency
issues. It will also update the Committee on progress to meet the
recommendations set out in the Mary Ney’s Review of Local
Enterprise Partnership governance and transparency.
Content and scope of the report
This report sets out:
- changes to the role and remit of LEPs since we last reported
in 2016 (Part One);
- the Department’s and LEPs’ progress with strengthening
governance, assurance and transparency (Part Two); and
- funding spent through LEPs to date and future funding
arrangements (Part Three).
We have not evaluated the effectiveness of the Department’s work
or the value for money of local growth funding spent through
LEPs.
Report conclusions
With the significant amount of public funding now delivered
through LEPs and the recent failure of the GCGP LEP, there is a
clear rationale for more demonstrable good governance in LEPs and
better oversight by the Department. We recognise the inherent
tension the Department faces in developing a system of governance
over a delivery model based on the devolution of funding and
responsibilities to ad hoc, business-led partnerships. The
Department has responded by implementing the recommendations of
the Ney Review and some of those made by the Committee. While the
assurance framework is stronger, backed up by checks on
compliance, it is not proven yet whether these measures will be
effective in detecting and responding to governance failures over
significant sums of public money.
The Department’s accounting officer is accountable for the Local
Growth Fund delivered through LEPs. However, the Department has
made no effort to evaluate the value for money of nearly £12
billion in public funding, nor does it have robust plans to do
so. The Department needs a grip on how effectively these funds
are used. It needs to act if it wants to have any hope of
learning the lessons of what works locally for future
interventions in local growth, including the new UK Shared
Prosperity Fund.
