Birmingham LEP has 85 applicants for board places
EIGHTY-FIVE ‘high calibre’ business people have applied for the eight private sector places on the board of Birmingham’s Local Enterprise Partnership.
The ‘shadow’ board headed by temporary chair Bridget Blow is now interviewing a shortlist of 20 candidates with the aim of a fully constituted board being in place by April 1.
Birmingham Chamber chief executive Jerry Blackett, who is not involved in the final selection process, but did assist in the shortlisting, told TheBusinessDesk.com that sceptics would be impressed with the make-up of the board – and that the private sector ‘legitimacy’ of the successful candidates was non-negotiable in the selection process.
He said: “I’m as confident as I can be that we’ll announce some names that will make people sit up and take notice. There are some that really have the ‘wow’ factor, either in terms of the very high profile businesses they run or the specific skills and senior experience they can bring to the LEP.”
Birmingham’s LEP is the only one in the West Midlands to run a formal recruitment process for the private sector board members who will sit alongside seven representatives from local authorities and the universities.
Mr Blackett said: “It’s incredibly important to get this right and to ensure the right people come forward to play a part. We have taken a deliberately careful approach rather than rushing in to create a lot of noise straight away.”
And in a riposte to critics who warned that the LEP needs to be led by ‘real business people’, Mr Blackett insisted that the definition of private sector candidates was being rigorously enforced.
He said: “We are fully respecting the private sector nature of these eight places and therefore candidates from any organisations that are part publicly-owned, or ‘quasi-public’ will not get through.
“The LEP is a chance to put the private sector fully in the driving seat of economic development, and we’re not going to let that slip by.”
Mr Blackett’s comments will be seen as ruling out the direct involvement of senior figures such as Paul Thandi of the NEC Group and Paul Kehoe of Birmingham Airport. Both organisations are part-owned by local authorities.
He wouldn’t be drawn on discussing individual candidates, but said: “The LEP board needs to be fully independent and representative of the views of private business, so it simply wouldn’t be right for members to have potential conflicts of interest about their ultimate masters.”
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