I was interested yesterday to see Vince Cable announce the first 25 LEPS, Local Enterprise Partnerships. I shall be curious to see how many more follow and whether the loss of the RDAs, Regional Development Agencies, proves to be significant to the economic wellbeing of different regions in England.
Regionalism and localism are not easy bedfellows and that is not always of help to local trading standards services who need to always have a framework to combine talent, effort and capacity to maximise impact in favour of consumers, good business, local and yes regional economies. The government funding available to support LEPS looks to be about a third of that which had rested with the RDAs. Only time will tell whether this suffices.
At the moment there are vast gaps in the spread of LEPS and areas and regions like Lancashire and the South West will have no enterprise body to bid for central funds until, and if, they establish LEPS. Critics have labelled LEPS as a fragmented network of toothless talking shops. Let us hope they are wrong.
The Local Growth White Paper, launched this week by Nick Clegg, pins hopes on councils being better enterprise supporters and catalysts. It also recognises the key role of well maintained trading standards for that purpose. Bottom up regionalism built on the new found localism will be essential to trading standards services performing as Mr Clegg wants. LEPS and political preferences should not get in the way of operational and strategic pragmatism.
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