What's so special about a Local Enterprise Partnership?

Many of you will know I became the Chair of Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP) in April this year where I have served on the Board since 2016. I have been incredibly lucky to learn from two inspiring Chairs since that time in Nick Abell and Jonathan Browning. Nick steered us steadily through 12 months of crisis and fought tirelessly for Coventry & Warwickshire businesses every day ensuring our needs and challenges were front and centre in Central Government; and Jonathan strengthened many of the crucial structures we rely upon to deliver today: the Growth Hub, the Programme Delivery Board, the Capital Projects Team, and CW Champions.

But what is so special about a Local Enterprise Partnership? Why do we need them to support businesses and drive growth in our geographies?

Pre-pandemic, CWLEP were the fastest growing geography for economic productivity and prosperity. In my time on the Board we had moved from measuring jobs created to profit generated per person (GVA); and had directly supported over 5,500 SME businesses with their growth ambitions. We had also delivered on an investment programme that saw ￡191 million of Central Government funding unlock a further ￡407.4 million from private and public partners across the region. And then the world changed.

Slight diversion to share with you what a Local Enterprise Partnership is and that they differ in structure across the UK depending on the economic geography they serve. Local Enterprise Partnerships were established by the Coalition Government in 2011 championed by Greg Clark, in his role then as Secretary of State for Communities, Housing, and Local Government. Greg remained a champion when he moved to Business, Energy, & Industrial Strategy; and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs for short) were the direct recipients of Local Growth Deals to invest in the capital infrastructure that would enable economic growth in their sub-regions.

The geography of a LEP was established in the beginning by the consortia who came from the region to put the original bid for a LEP to Government. I cannot take any credit for that bid or that geography decision for Coventry & Warwickshire (we have CW Chamber, the FSB, our colleges and universities; and our Local Authorities to thank for that stroke of genius!) but I have seen first-hand how well it works and why. It’s a geography with sector strengths and SME supply chains that depend on each other so the impact of investment in the eco-system is easily defined and quickly felt. It is a geography that is small enough to unite and large enough to provide scale. It is a geography that boasts the highest number of patents per capita second only to Cambridge. It is a geography with huge opportunity in cross-sector innovation. And it is this geography and CWLEP’s strong and local delivery structures that will be critical in our economy’s evolution.

Back to today. Over the last 18 months, CWLEP proved how valuable LEP structures are to their local economy and I have three great examples to share.

The first was the work of CW Growth Hub responding to the urgent call from our NHS Trusts for PPE and the support given to help our local manufacturers diversify to become a new healthcare supply chain. This innovative approach to new products has created over 200 jobs in one Rugby based thermal insulation manufacturer alone! It has also helped pave the way for further innovation in our SME supply chain and local NHS procurement processes with our healthcare trusts using Find It In CW to advertise their contracts and CW Employment Solutions to advertise their roles. This is a framework CW Growth Hub are working closely with the Cabinet Office for Public Procurement to replicate across the UK. Eight globally innovative products are also being co-created through the Innovation Hub at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) including digital passports for surgeons, wearables, and ultra-violet sanitation.

The second example is the work CWLEP have done in conjunction with our Local Authorities on grant funding and ensuring it reaches those most in need during the pandemic. It became clear early on that Government doesn’t have a strong grasp on business eco-system or how it has evolved over recent years. There was little or no support for freelancers, especially those in the creative, performance, and events industries - who were suffering complete loss of income as a result of Covid-19. Our Digital Creative Business Group at CWLEP made ‘the Freelancer Gap’ one of its key priorities and gathered a convincing evidence base which went to regional and national Government. As a result of this strategic work, Local Authorities in Coventry & Warwickshire were able to use their discretionary grant funding to support creative freelancers in this area. CW Growth Hub also provided a vital service to Local Authorities to ensure grants were distributed quickly and received by those most in need.

My final example (and I could give you many more!) is the work of Coventry & Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust (CWRT) in partnership with Local Authorities and our Programme Delivery Board. CWRT were able to access repurposed funding from CWLEP and Warwickshire County Council to deliver Covid specific loan finance to businesses which needed it. Our Programme Delivery Board were instrumental in shaping the loan finance offer for those businesses and ensuring interest rates remained competitive and achievable. Full credit to fellow Board Director Zamurad Hussain, Managing Director of HBT Communications, who played a pivotal role in this. As a result, CWRT went from lending a few hundred thousand a year to lending ￡7.6 million over the last 18 months. Many of the manufacturers diversifying in my first example benefitted from having such finance available.

Now Coventry & Warwickshire and our LEP are in the process of transition. We worked hard last year to produce our Strategic Reset Framework in partnership with our Business Groups and stakeholders across the region; which has the core objective to make Coventry & Warwickshire a highly attractive place to live, work, study, and invest. We know that Government is looking to drive growth, productivity, and levelling-up (whatever that might mean!) and we as Coventry & Warwickshire are keen to pro-actively define what this means for us. I have held Vision Group sessions with a core group of Directors over the summer and now I am sharing our vision work with a wider audience. I would love to chat more to you about what ‘good’ growth looks like for Coventry & Warwickshire and who we need to lead it. Save those thoughts for coffee on another day and please get in touch on [email protected]

I want to leave you with the values and the structures that have enabled us to move quickly over the last 18 months and pull such crucial strategic work together, while still delivering on an ambitious multi-million pound capital development programme under Getting Building Fund; leading on region-wide innovation programmes like Made Smarter; and responding to the pandemic in the examples I have given above. Our values, articulated through our vision work, very much represent Coventry & Warwickshire values: our cohesion and community; our leadership and accountability to each other; our endurance through adversity and our ability to have continual positive impact on the world.

And the structures we hold most dear are illustrated in the diagram below. It's a simplified CWLEP on a page but it shows the mechanics that allow us to collaboratively deliver for businesses across Coventry & Warwickshire and beyond. The commitment of our Public-Private Partnership Board driving investment in hard and soft infrastructure to enable growth with both University Vice-Chancellors and representatives from Further Education as well as leaders in our public and private sectors. Our CW Growth Hub delivering business-led support and sharing collective intelligence from and through our Reset Taskforce and our Business Groups. Our Programme Delivery Board holding projects to account and ensuring public money really delivers for businesses. Our CW Champions network connecting those who care passionately about place to drive inclusive and sustainable change.

I don’t know what’s so special about a Local Enterprise Partnership; but I do know this is what is special about ours.