Government is offering local areas the opportunity to take control of their future economic development. Local enterprise partnerships are locally-owned partnerships between local authorities and businesses. Local enterprise partnerships will play a central role in determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and the creation of local jobs. They are also a key vehicle in delivering Government objectives for economic growth and decentralisation, whilst also providing a means for local authorities to work together with business in order to quicken the economic recovery.

As local enterprise partnerships are based on more meaningful economic areas, they will be better placed to determine the needs of the local economy along with a greater ability to identify barriers to local economic growth.

On 28 October 2010, Government announced 24 partnerships that were ready to move forward and establish their local enterprise partnership boards. A further 6 partnerships have been announced since October. The 30 partnerships are:  

• Birmingham and Solihull
• Black Country
• Cheshire and Warrington
• Coast to Capital
• Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
• Coventry and Warwickshire
• Cumbria
• Enterprise M3 (North Hampshire/West Surrey)
• Greater Cambridgeshire and Greater Peterborough
• Greater Manchester
• Hertfordshire
• Kent and Greater Essex and East Sussex
• Leeds City Region
• Leicester and Leicestershire
• Lincolnshire
• Liverpool City Region
• New Anglia
• North Eastern
• Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby, Derbyshire
• Oxfordshire City Region
• Sheffield City Region
• Solent
• South East Midlands
• Stoke and Staffordshire
• Tees Valley
• Thames Valley Berkshire
• The Marches
• West of England
• Worcestershire
• York and North Yorkshire

A map showing these areas is available - see the link at the top right.

The Government's Coalition Programme states:

"We will support the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships - joint local authority-business bodies brought forward by local authorities themselves to promote local economic development - to replace Regional Development Agencies (RDAs)."

Following an invitation to local authorities and businesses, on 29 June 2010 (available to download below), to bring forward proposals for local enterprise partnerships, Government received 62 responses. 56 of these were proposals for local enterprise partnerships and 24 of which were announced in the first group to be taken forward on the 28 October 2010. Further partnerships are being taken forward as and when they resubmit developed proposals that meet the expectations of the invitational letter of the 29 June 2010.

The Government issued a separate letter on 8 October to all London Borough Leaders, Chief Executives, the Mayor and Business Leaders inviting them to consider the case for whether to jointly submit outline proposals for London local enterprise partnerships. A copy of the letter is available to download below. Proposals are currently being reviewed. Please direct all email queries to localenterprisepartnerships@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Should you wish to contact the team to discuss your proposals, details are as below:

Local enterprise partnerships is a shared policy between DCLG and BIS. Additional material is available on the BIS website, see link, top right.

Related downloads

• Letter to Local Authority leaders and business leaders - 29 June 2010
  PDF, 82 kb, 2 pages
• Local enterprise partnerships contacts
  PDF, 38 kb, 2 pages
• Letter to the Mayor of London, London Borough Leaders and London Business Leaders - 8 October 2010
  PDF, 56 kb, 2 pages
• Static map of local economic partnerships
  PDF, 1213 kb, 1 pages
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• http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/local/localenterprisepartnerships/