Bernard Ginns: Enterprise partnerships only as good as we make them

Business Secretary Vince Cable knows how to attract a good headline.

In a recent speech to business leaders, Mr Cable said getting rid of the regional development agencies and bringing in local enterprise partnerships (Leps) "has perhaps been a little Maoist and chaotic".

He went on to claim that "overall, we're giving back to councils and local authorities the powers and incentives they need to see a resurgence in civic pride".

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Colourful language aside, Mr Cable's comments are a clear plea for patience and understanding while the new structures are established.

Most new governments enjoy goodwill in their first few months, but this is finite and I have not been overly impressed with the way Mr Cable and his colleague Eric Pickles have handled the regional growth agenda.

There seems to have been destruction for destruction's sake and in Yorkshire, the scrapping of the RDA has greatly added to the feeling of economic uncertainty, regardless of where you stood on its overall effectiveness. The outgoing CBI director-general Richard Lambert voiced the concerns of many when he described the setting up of Leps as a "shambles".

That said, we are where we are and I hope that we end up with Leps that are more than just local authority-dominated talking shops.

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To a large extent, the success of Leps across Yorkshire depends on the calibre of business leaders recruited to their boards.

The process of appointing those boards and chairmen is now underway, at least in Leeds, which is set to be home to the biggest Lep outside of the South East.

As I understand it, some candidates with "very clear business credibility" have come forward to express an interest in taking seats on the board.

These include some "very senior people and not the usual suspects", according to well-placed sources.

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Tom Riordan, the chief executive of Leeds City Council, wouldn't talk about candidates when I spoke with him yesterday, but he was prepared to talk about why people should get involved with the Lep, which is designed to stimulate economic growth and job creation.

"It provides an opportunity for Leeds to get on the map nationally, perhaps in a way we have not done so well in the past in terms of getting investment into the area," he said.

Mr Riordan admitted that the team putting together the Leeds Lep is finding it difficult to answer basic questions about what the job of board member might entail and how much its budget might be.

"The main risk is the uncertainty," said Mr Riordan. However, with that uncertainty comes an opportunity to shape the future direction of the organisation and the city region itself, he said.

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He would not comment on Mr Cable's words, other than to say that the Leeds experience has been "good, positive and constructive". The city region did distinguish itself by having its bid accepted at the first time of asking.

On the bigger question of how the city might look like in the future, when there is little or no public spending beyond frontline services, Mr Riordan said he wanted it to become "a magnet for investment and jobs outside London and the South East to the point where it becomes the natural place you want to go if you are looking outside of London to invest".

The city region offers the best of both worlds, he said, in terms of "a strong economy, good labour market and critical mass" and quality of life.

He said the private sector in the city region "has always been very resilient, self starting and diverse" and so will help the city region through the difficult rebalancing phase that the public sector is going through.

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It's in everyone's interests to make sure that all the Yorkshire Leps succeed.

They will only be as good as we make them.

A relatively obscure item of news from the financial markets arrived yesterday that could have some widespread benefits for the wider economy.

Leeds Building Society has raised 250m in 10-year long-term funding through a covered bond issue.

The mutual said this was the first money raised by any financial institution in the UK sterling covered bond market since June 2007 and the first ever using residential mortgages as security.

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The money will be used to help boost mortgage lending next year, said Ian Ward, chief executive.

The building society has secured most of its long-term funding requirements for 2010-11 and now plans to increase lending from 1bn in 2010 to 1.4bn next year.

"It gives us confidence to lend more," he told me.

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