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Government response to Lord Heseltine report

Lindsay Plumpton

By: Lindsay Plumpton

Communications Leader

Tuesday 26 March 2013

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The Government has published its response to Lord Heseltine’s 2012 report ‘No Stone Unturned - In Pursuit of Growth’. They’ve set out how they will adopt (partially or fully) 81 of his original 89 recommendations.

To support this, the Government has committed ‘to creating a Single Local Growth Fund in England from April 2015, and devolving responsibilities, influence and growth-related spending on the basis of strategic plans developed by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs)’. LEPs will bid for money from this single growth fund, and use it to fund (and leverage additional funding for) the 3 critical areas for investment in their region: transport, housing and skills.

The rationale for this is that ‘the Government believes that including an element of skills funding within the Single Local Growth Fund is important in order to give LEPs the ability to influence provision, particularly for local small and medium sized enterprises’.

We can expect some aspect of skills funding to be deferred to the regional LEPs (Apprenticeship funding, for now, looks to remain under central government control). A formal announcement will follow the next spending round (scheduled for June 2013). The amount of funding an LEP can bid for, (and the total funding available) will be announced from April 2015.

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