COMMENT Is it RIP for “levelling up” then? Seems to have withered on the vine. Still a bit of HMG grant money kicking about, but the heat has gone out.
Pity. The property world rather liked levelling up, albeit only intuitively, having no real idea what it meant – in common with the rest of the country. Leaving aside the issue of social justice (although I won’t, or not for long) we thought it had potential to create some new markets out there. And, of course, our industry will back anything if it opens up new markets.
As part of this picture – snuck out over the summer so you may not even have noticed – we’ve seen the quiet announcement of the demise of the local enterprise partnerships, although I don’t think they’re going down without a fight. As the LEPs were a Conservative invention in the first place, this feels gratuitously destructive.
At the very least, it is a shocking waste, given that LEPs offered unique partnerships involving 2,000 business leaders, working with 180 local government leaders and 250 further and higher education heads, right across England. In some places, the LEPs worked extraordinarily well, providing real catalysts for local change, identifying and exploiting local business opportunities. They were devised, bottom-up, and they covered economically rational geographies.
Some of us in the industry used the LEPs to great effect, unlocking crucial developments that other organisations and partnerships had been unable to deliver. It may have been a patchy performance across the piece, with some LEPs being excellent and others being… err …less so, but half a loaf is better than no bread. And I don’t know why the government wouldn’t work with what is already there.
Hands up for growth
Nationally, the LEPs had identified five “future values” (to chime with levelling up, bless, such good little soldiers) which were: net zero; innovation (R&D and productivity); business support; stimulating private investment and – crucially – skills. You would have to be barking mad not to be in violent support of these.
So it is a great shame that we are now destabilising these local partnerships between private sector, public sector, academia and third sector, with nothing being proposed in their place. And it is difficult to see where future support to local SMEs, in particular, will be forthcoming. The 2,000 business leaders who put considerable time, energy and expertise into the LEPs must be feeling rather aggrieved right now, not to mention disillusioned. We run the risk of losing that invaluable investment into our localities.
And it’s not very clear where pro-growth local authorities turn now. So it was hardly surprising that when our own Samantha McClary suggested setting up an EG Public Sector Forum to mirror the established EG Investors Forum and the EG Agents Forum (and in a moment of madness asked me to chair) we immediately got a lot of interest – and I mean a lot – from districts, county and unitary authorities, alongside Homes England, who want to put their hands up for growth.
Our aim is to encourage more place-based local partnerships on the ground, basically – to be blunt – to stimulate more investment from the property industry in less well-known markets. It is envisaged that the forum will work up a blueprint for colleagues in the wider local government family to get more effective access to investors, tapping into the fact that EG has rather a strong convening power with these guys.
We will keep it focused on the local level; the complexity of government agencies and departments in this space will not be allowed to cloud the vision of what we are trying to achieve.
“Doin’ it for themselves”
We held the inaugural meeting of the EG Public Sector Forum a couple of weeks back, and it is fair to say that I have seldom felt such energy in a room. It was also great fun which, you’ll agree, is a rare thing these days.
Working with the investors and the agents groups, we hope the outcome will be the publication of a streamlined guide to effective shaping of local projects for investment purposes. And EG is working collaboratively with The Municipal Journal, the weekly local government magazine, in the hope of getting a much more productive dialogue going between the two sectors. We are urging local authorities just to get on with stuff, and not wait to merely respond to some sort of government initiative, such as, dare I say, (the busted flush of) levelling up.
Shame about the LEPs. Shame about levelling up. But the lesson here is we can’t wait around for some top-down government initiative to grow our local economies. Back in the day, Eurythmics had a great hit with Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves. Our pro-growth local authorities will be supported by our industry to do likewise.
Jackie Sadek is director of Rural & Urban Strategic. She is co-author, with Peter Bill, of Broken Homes. Britain’s Housing Crisis: Faults, Factoids and Fixes. Sadek is chair of the newly formed EG Public Sector Forum
