On 28 October 2010 Government published the Local Growth White Paper, which sets out its new approach to sub-national growth, including more information about Local Enterprise Partnerships and the Regional Growth Fund.
It focuses on three key themes:
* Shifting power to local communities and businesses – those who understand their economies best should lead their development and enable all places to fulfil their potential.
* Increasing confidence to invest – create the right conditions for growth through Government allowing market forces to determine where growth takes place and provide incentives which ensure that local communities benefit from development.
* Focused intervention – tackling barriers to growth that the market will not address itself, supporting investment that will have a long term impact on growth and supporting areas with long term growth challenges manage their transition to what is appropriate for the local area. Government policies should work with the market, not seek to artificially create growth.
The White Paper confirms government’s intentions for wide-ranging reform that include:
- shift power to local communities and business, enabling places to tailor their approach to local circumstances (1)
- promote efficient and dynamic markets, in particular in the supply of land (1)
- provide real and significant incentives for places that go for growth (1)
- support investment in places and people to tackle the barriers to growth (1)
- managing the wind down and closure of the RDAs to maximise value and take the opportunity to look again at key European funding for economic development (2)
- introducing a national presumption in favour of sustainable development which will apply to decisions on all planning applications (3)
- local communities will also have new Right-to-Build powers (3)
- fundamentally reforming and streamlining national planning policy and guidance, presenting to Parliament a simple national planning framework (3)
- placing a new statutory duty to cooperate on local authorities, public bodies and private bodies that are critical to plan-making, such as infrastructure providers (3)
- by tackling the impact of regulation. Regulation is enforced and applied across England both by regulators operating at national level, and by local authorities. The Government wants to ensure that where it is enforced, regulators do so in a way that supports rather than impedes business growth. We will be working to ensure that regulation is enforced at the right level to support this aim, and in a way that ensures an appropriate level of accountability to business (B.7)
- green Low Carbon Clusters… local enterprise partnerships playing a co-ordinating role, bringing together industry with local partners such as skills bodies, planning, and business (B.19)
- a strong emphasis on leadership by local tourism interests, in particular, local tourism businesses. It is intended that VisitEngland will play a supporting role at the national level, and will provide expertise and help in enabling local tourism bodies to develop their own tourism strategies and to work together, where joint activity is desirable (B.20)
- freeing colleges and training organisations from central control and bureaucracy, so they can decide the training offer which responds directly to what well informed individual learners and employers want (B.43)
- the removal of the requirement on local authorities to come together in sub-regional and regional planning groups, with local authorities working together to meet local needs as they see fit (B.46)
- Local enterprise partnerships could take on a strategic planning role linked to their objectives of fostering sustainable economic growth. Many of the outline partnership proposals have identified a clear interest in undertaking strategic planning functions linked to infrastructure delivery… Partnerships will be free to develop strategic planning frameworks to address economic development and infrastructure issues which relate to economic geography. They may also wish to take on other planning related activities, including enabling the timely processing of applications for strategic development and infrastructure (B.47)
- Outside London, the Homes and Communities Agency will continue to have an important role at the request of local authorities and under local leadership by providing expertise on housing and physical regeneration… The approach that will be put in place is built around the following strands:
– handing more power to communities to drive regeneration
– supporting places to generate investment and enabling communities by providing the tools to decide what happens and where; and
– bringing its resources to bear for the benefit of local areas (B.50)
- In housing… establishing the right conditions to draw in… investment through its proposals for reforming the planning system; providing incentives for local authorities and communities for unlocking land for development; de-regulation of the private rented sector (B.53)
Download the White Paper HERE: LINK
