Local Enterprise Partnerships
The White Paper lists some of the roles that LEPs may take on. Click on the header below to see how we can help.
Resolving investment priorities, and coordinating project delivery
Creating winning bids to the Regional Growth Fund
Supporting high growth businesses through new growth hubs
Helping businesses to get involved in planning
Streamlining local business regulation
Streamlining housing and employment delivery
Enabling providers to help local workless people into jobs
Coordinating approaches to leveraging funding from the private sector
Exploring incentives on renewable energy projects and Green Deal
Delivering other national priorities - such as low carbon growth
RTP can help you structure thinking around your priorities. Our tried-and-tested approach is to put stakeholders’ priorities through a series of “filters” – looking at Treasury tests, strategic alignment, delivery timeframes and deliverability.
The concept is shown below: at the end of the prioritisation process, we know which programmes to discourage, which to ignore, what to plan for, and what to invest in.
Contact Andrew Clarke for more.
Back to top
Contact Dave Lawrence for more.
Back to top
Getting new growth hubs to function effectively is an exciting challenge. We think in terms of an “AC/DC model”. Absorptive capacity (AC) allows a place to identify, value and assimilate new knowledge. Absorptive capacity is made up of three elements - a) the capacity to access networks of knowledge and innovation; b) the capacity to anchor external knowledge from people, institutions and firms; and c) the capacity to diffuse new innovation and knowledge in the wider economy. Development capacity (DC) allows a place to either create or exploit new knowledge commercially. We can help you get these AC and DC processes in place, and can bring to bear extensive expertise from experience in developing innovation centres and Science Parks.
Contact Andrew Clarke for more.
Back to top
We believe that there is a gap in understanding between planners, economists and businesses: there is not yet a common language that easily allows business’ priorities to be translated into economists’ principles or planning policies. One of LEPs’ most critical roles will be to create this shared language.
RTP can help. We have unique experience of dealing with very similar issues elsewhere. We produced regional guidance on planning for the economy and employment in four English regions and advised Communities and Local Government on the new Policy Planning Statement (PPS)4, Planning for Sustainable Economic Development (2009) and supporting guidance. We also have huge experience of applying these high-level policies in practice, having produced countless employment land reviews and related studies for local authorities, sub-regions, regions and one country (Northern Ireland) as well as many site-specific studies and strategies.
Contact Cristina Howick for more.
Back to top
If this is going to be successful, it will be very important to reflect on what previous policy cycles are telling us. There is nothing very new about some form of simplified planning zone, and they historically have not proved particularly popular: the concept was first proposed in the early 1980s (in Circular 14/85) and has had various incarnations since. But the time might now be right for LDOs; whilst the Killian Pretty review shows that local planning authorities still have largely negative views about the potential for LDOs, the Spending Review’s demand for a wholesale redesign of public sector activities may stimulate a greater appetite for change.
On their own, however, LDOs are unlikely to be sufficient. It is clear that businesses set more store by an extension of national permitted development rights and prior approval processes. What is apparent from the Penfold report is that these prior approval processes – also known as ‘non-planning consents’ (those consents that have to be obtained alongside or after, and separate from, planning permission in order to complete a development) can also have a serious impact on how efficiently and effectively the end-to-end development process operates. The complexity of the non-planning consents landscape and its interaction with the planning system impose additional costs and generate additional risk for businesses.
We know what is likely to create dynamic markets and the confidence to invest – and what is likely to be unsuccessful.
Contact John Parmiter for more.
Back to top
We can help LEPs get housing and jobs delivery going in the most challenging of circumstances. Much of our work is in areas where viability is marginal; we devise innovative and flexible delivery strategies for such projects, bringing public sector powers and funding together with private sector capital and market knowledge. We ensure that policies and strategies are based on an understanding of viability, and are clearly packaged in a way that minimises risk and maximises investment attractiveness. Where public sector funding is essential to get delivery started, Roger Tym & Partners' applications for public funding have led to the successful delivery of some of the country's most high profile projects. We innovated and continue to refine an approach to growth that our clients find efficient and effective. The plans we prepare are for complex, underperforming, local areas with difficult markets where pooled and aligned funding streams were essential – and each case our plans are being delivered.
We also work in parts of the country where underlying viability is better, but the issues are no less complex. For example, the North Chelmsford AAP promotes an urban extension to the town of some 4,000 homes. The AAP required greater understanding of infrastructure needs and demonstration of the viability of such development. Our assessment is a key part of the AAP evidence base, demonstrating that the plan is deliverable. RTP worked with stakeholders to fully understand the individual needs, costs, funding sources and programming of all the main items, which include major road works and a railway station.
Contact Nora Galley for more.
Back to top
We have recently worked for the London Skills and Employment Board to design an evaluation framework, and undertake an evaluation; worked with the Exeter Employment and Skills Board Growth to assess the demand for skills and supply of training provision on the context of new growth point developments; worked for the London Development Agency on evaluating the Local Employment & Training Framework Evaluation, and worked on a wide range of skills projects across the East of England (in Peterborough, Cambridge, Suffolk and Haven Gateway).
Contact Duncan Melville for more.
Back to top
Institutional investors are now growing cash rich, and are looking for investment opportunities which meet their now tighter risk profiles. Aspects of green investment – particularly in waste and utilities – could meet those risk requirements; if risk profiles were sliced in the right way, a really significant stream of private sector investment could be available. RTP can help your LEP unlock these resources.
Contact Chris Bowden for more.
Back to top
The primary audience for this work will be central government – in particular, the Treasury. If this work is to convince this particularly sceptical department, it will need to be hard-headed and realistic.
In particular, work will need to show that the lessons of previous policy cycles have been learnt. This is not the first time that regional/area based planning incentives and financial-related incentives have been used; Regional Selective Assistance, though now largely moribund, was used extensively in the 1980s and 1990s. Enterprise Zones (EZs) called for reduced governmental regulation, lower taxes, and other financial incentives for businesses. But EZ evaluation (authored primarily by RTP partner Cristina Howick) found that the EZs overall had cost nearly £300 million, but only led to the creation of 13,000 net jobs.
This indicates that the challenge of getting “green” incentives right will be to isolate the specific ingredients of previous incentive policies that have been shown to be effective. We can add this approach to an innovative analysis of the new opportunies offered by some of the new local freedoms offered by Government - including flexibility on local taxation in areas such as Discretionary Business Rate Discounts. We will also explore ideas which were in the Conservative manifesto such as the Business Increase Bonus scheme (allowing any council whose amount of annual business rate rises by more than the national rate to keep the additional funds for six years) – which, state aid allowing, could be recycled into incentives. Alongside this, there are other financial support incentives to pursue, including the scope for Tax Increment Finance (TIF) for infrastructure investment, PFI and other areas such as the use of New Homes Bonus money for supporting green jobs.
Contact Cristina Howick for more.
Back to top
Consideration and research in relation to these sectors has become a core component of RTP’s work. We are advising local authorities on economic development initiatives for developing the low carbon economy sector opportunities. We advise on the economic consequences of climate change and assess the impact of policy, economic trends and specific projects.
We are a leading advisor to the energy sector, including the National Grid, with particular experience in renewables. We are supporting masterplans in planning for zero and low carbon developments, including eco-towns in Cornwall. We provide new developments with well-grounded assessments, analysis and research, and undertake socio-economic impact studies, feasibility and funding assessments.
Knowledge of different tools for pricing non-market benefits is particularly important where projects have insufficient resources for detailed calculation of economic benefits and costs. For example we recently costed the value of savings in carbon emissions in an appraisal of an Anaerobic Digester project.
Contact Nick Skelton for more.
Back to top
Resolving investment priorities, and coordinating project delivery
Creating winning bids to the Regional Growth Fund
Supporting high growth businesses through new growth hubs
Helping businesses to get involved in planning
Streamlining local business regulation
Streamlining housing and employment delivery
Enabling providers to help local workless people into jobs
Coordinating approaches to leveraging funding from the private sector
Exploring incentives on renewable energy projects and Green Deal
Delivering other national priorities - such as low carbon growth
Resolving investment priorities, and coordinating project delivery
Setting local investment priorities from the myriad competing claims for funds can be difficult - different interests push different agendas, and those who shout the loudest can wield unreasonable influence. Without a framework for helping LEPs decide what the priorities should be, choices can be sub-optimal, and funding can be wasted.RTP can help you structure thinking around your priorities. Our tried-and-tested approach is to put stakeholders’ priorities through a series of “filters” – looking at Treasury tests, strategic alignment, delivery timeframes and deliverability.
The concept is shown below: at the end of the prioritisation process, we know which programmes to discourage, which to ignore, what to plan for, and what to invest in.
Contact Andrew Clarke for more.
Back to top
Creating winning bids to the Regional Growth Fund
We know how to write successful funding bids, and have evolved a list of “critical success factors” which translate into successful bids: over the years, we estimate that we have won hundreds of millions of pounds in regeneration funding for our clients.
Winning bids must
- Really absorb the funding stream’s objectives – and show clearly and simply how they will be met. Experienced assessors can quickly see when old projects are being bent to hit a new set of criteria, and are immediately suspicious. That doesn’t mean pre-existing projects are bound to fail to hit new objectives – it just means we need to ensure that the project has been subject to a clear-eyed rethink in the light of new criteria.
- Be succinct, accurate, and punchy. Bids rarely fail because of a shortage of information. They can fail if they don’t grab the assessor with a clear, big picture vision, and then fail to show how the big picture will be addressed in practice.
- Make it easy for the appraisers. Assessors often have very large volumes of bids to assess. Bids need to be structured well, and signpost assessors to the answers to the questions that they have.
- Be clear about the needs the bid is going to satisfy. This is sometimes confused with the demand for the project: it is not the same thing. To provide a really strong rationale for application, the need case needs to show how the project hits combination of social and economic factors to genuinely address underlying problems.
- Show that the project is working with the grain of change. Assessors will find it difficult to believe overambitious aspirations for “step changes” and structural shifts.
- Deal with state aid issues early. In our experience, state aid issues are dependent on the precise legal status of the applicant organisation, the nature of the beneficiaries and the levels of previous funding received.
Contact Dave Lawrence for more.
Back to top
Supporting high growth businesses through new growth hubs
Research shows that innovation is “one of the main engines of long-term economic growth and structural change”. LEPs need to reliably identify high growth, innovative businesses – and then ensure that these are anchored to the local economy. Recent research has shown that targeting high growth sectors alone will not generate the jobs growth that LEPs are looking for. Instead, high growth businesses are found in every sector of the economy. RTP can help you locate them.Getting new growth hubs to function effectively is an exciting challenge. We think in terms of an “AC/DC model”. Absorptive capacity (AC) allows a place to identify, value and assimilate new knowledge. Absorptive capacity is made up of three elements - a) the capacity to access networks of knowledge and innovation; b) the capacity to anchor external knowledge from people, institutions and firms; and c) the capacity to diffuse new innovation and knowledge in the wider economy. Development capacity (DC) allows a place to either create or exploit new knowledge commercially. We can help you get these AC and DC processes in place, and can bring to bear extensive expertise from experience in developing innovation centres and Science Parks.
Contact Andrew Clarke for more.
Back to top
Helping businesses to get involved in planning
There are parts of the planning process that businesses cannot afford to ignore. We can help.We believe that there is a gap in understanding between planners, economists and businesses: there is not yet a common language that easily allows business’ priorities to be translated into economists’ principles or planning policies. One of LEPs’ most critical roles will be to create this shared language.
RTP can help. We have unique experience of dealing with very similar issues elsewhere. We produced regional guidance on planning for the economy and employment in four English regions and advised Communities and Local Government on the new Policy Planning Statement (PPS)4, Planning for Sustainable Economic Development (2009) and supporting guidance. We also have huge experience of applying these high-level policies in practice, having produced countless employment land reviews and related studies for local authorities, sub-regions, regions and one country (Northern Ireland) as well as many site-specific studies and strategies.
Contact Cristina Howick for more.
Back to top
Streamlining local business regulation
Getting the right planning framework is going to be critical in creating the confidence to invest. Much of the thinking for LEPs on local regulation is likely to centre on how the planning system can operate streamlined Local Development Orders (LDOs).If this is going to be successful, it will be very important to reflect on what previous policy cycles are telling us. There is nothing very new about some form of simplified planning zone, and they historically have not proved particularly popular: the concept was first proposed in the early 1980s (in Circular 14/85) and has had various incarnations since. But the time might now be right for LDOs; whilst the Killian Pretty review shows that local planning authorities still have largely negative views about the potential for LDOs, the Spending Review’s demand for a wholesale redesign of public sector activities may stimulate a greater appetite for change.
On their own, however, LDOs are unlikely to be sufficient. It is clear that businesses set more store by an extension of national permitted development rights and prior approval processes. What is apparent from the Penfold report is that these prior approval processes – also known as ‘non-planning consents’ (those consents that have to be obtained alongside or after, and separate from, planning permission in order to complete a development) can also have a serious impact on how efficiently and effectively the end-to-end development process operates. The complexity of the non-planning consents landscape and its interaction with the planning system impose additional costs and generate additional risk for businesses.
We know what is likely to create dynamic markets and the confidence to invest – and what is likely to be unsuccessful.
Contact John Parmiter for more.
Back to top
Streamlining housing and employment delivery
Strategic planning and housing delivery has been one of RTP’s main specialisms.We can help LEPs get housing and jobs delivery going in the most challenging of circumstances. Much of our work is in areas where viability is marginal; we devise innovative and flexible delivery strategies for such projects, bringing public sector powers and funding together with private sector capital and market knowledge. We ensure that policies and strategies are based on an understanding of viability, and are clearly packaged in a way that minimises risk and maximises investment attractiveness. Where public sector funding is essential to get delivery started, Roger Tym & Partners' applications for public funding have led to the successful delivery of some of the country's most high profile projects. We innovated and continue to refine an approach to growth that our clients find efficient and effective. The plans we prepare are for complex, underperforming, local areas with difficult markets where pooled and aligned funding streams were essential – and each case our plans are being delivered.
We also work in parts of the country where underlying viability is better, but the issues are no less complex. For example, the North Chelmsford AAP promotes an urban extension to the town of some 4,000 homes. The AAP required greater understanding of infrastructure needs and demonstration of the viability of such development. Our assessment is a key part of the AAP evidence base, demonstrating that the plan is deliverable. RTP worked with stakeholders to fully understand the individual needs, costs, funding sources and programming of all the main items, which include major road works and a railway station.
Contact Nora Galley for more.
Back to top
Enabling providers to help local workless people into jobs
Roger Tym & Partners can provide excellent quality advice to LEPs wishing to understand employment and labour market conditions, both now and in the future.We have recently worked for the London Skills and Employment Board to design an evaluation framework, and undertake an evaluation; worked with the Exeter Employment and Skills Board Growth to assess the demand for skills and supply of training provision on the context of new growth point developments; worked for the London Development Agency on evaluating the Local Employment & Training Framework Evaluation, and worked on a wide range of skills projects across the East of England (in Peterborough, Cambridge, Suffolk and Haven Gateway).
Contact Duncan Melville for more.
Back to top
Coordinating approaches to leveraging funding from the private sector
The Spending Review announced initial capital funding of £1 billion for a Green Investment Bank, together with additional potential funding from the sale of Government owned assets. The Bank’s role will be to finance green investment and lever in additional private sector money.Institutional investors are now growing cash rich, and are looking for investment opportunities which meet their now tighter risk profiles. Aspects of green investment – particularly in waste and utilities – could meet those risk requirements; if risk profiles were sliced in the right way, a really significant stream of private sector investment could be available. RTP can help your LEP unlock these resources.
Contact Chris Bowden for more.
Back to top
Exploring incentives on renewable energy projects and Green Deal
RTP can bring an intelligent and long-term perspective to its work for LEPs on incentivising growth in these sectors.The primary audience for this work will be central government – in particular, the Treasury. If this work is to convince this particularly sceptical department, it will need to be hard-headed and realistic.
In particular, work will need to show that the lessons of previous policy cycles have been learnt. This is not the first time that regional/area based planning incentives and financial-related incentives have been used; Regional Selective Assistance, though now largely moribund, was used extensively in the 1980s and 1990s. Enterprise Zones (EZs) called for reduced governmental regulation, lower taxes, and other financial incentives for businesses. But EZ evaluation (authored primarily by RTP partner Cristina Howick) found that the EZs overall had cost nearly £300 million, but only led to the creation of 13,000 net jobs.
This indicates that the challenge of getting “green” incentives right will be to isolate the specific ingredients of previous incentive policies that have been shown to be effective. We can add this approach to an innovative analysis of the new opportunies offered by some of the new local freedoms offered by Government - including flexibility on local taxation in areas such as Discretionary Business Rate Discounts. We will also explore ideas which were in the Conservative manifesto such as the Business Increase Bonus scheme (allowing any council whose amount of annual business rate rises by more than the national rate to keep the additional funds for six years) – which, state aid allowing, could be recycled into incentives. Alongside this, there are other financial support incentives to pursue, including the scope for Tax Increment Finance (TIF) for infrastructure investment, PFI and other areas such as the use of New Homes Bonus money for supporting green jobs.
Contact Cristina Howick for more.
Back to top
Delivering other national priorities - such as low carbon growth
The most significant economic imperative of the 21st century will be the transition to a low carbon economy. LEPs will have a major role to play here.Consideration and research in relation to these sectors has become a core component of RTP’s work. We are advising local authorities on economic development initiatives for developing the low carbon economy sector opportunities. We advise on the economic consequences of climate change and assess the impact of policy, economic trends and specific projects.
We are a leading advisor to the energy sector, including the National Grid, with particular experience in renewables. We are supporting masterplans in planning for zero and low carbon developments, including eco-towns in Cornwall. We provide new developments with well-grounded assessments, analysis and research, and undertake socio-economic impact studies, feasibility and funding assessments.
Knowledge of different tools for pricing non-market benefits is particularly important where projects have insufficient resources for detailed calculation of economic benefits and costs. For example we recently costed the value of savings in carbon emissions in an appraisal of an Anaerobic Digester project.
Contact Nick Skelton for more.
Back to top
