Marches LEP earmarks £34m to support SMEs
THE Marches Local Enterprise partnership is earmarking more than £34m of European funding to help the region’s small businesses become more competitive between 2014 and 2020.
Another £30m has been provisionally allocated to employment and skills, with activities funded by the EU aimed at tackling skills shortages, getting people into work and out of poverty and overcoming the barriers to getting and keeping a job.
The Marches LEP, which is tasked with revitalising the economy of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin, was provisionally allocated around £97.3m by the European Commission earlier this year towards the region’s key priorities for economic growth.
The LEP has now set out what it sees as those priorities in its Draft European Structural and Investment Funds Strategy.
Chairman of the Marches LEP, Graham Wynn, said: “Over several months, we have consulted with our partners, local authorities and stakeholders including the business community, about how these EU funds should be spent.
“We put together a number of groups with leading private sector business people and experts from the public sector to look at what the key priorities are and we’ve surveyed the business communities of the three areas, asking them what support they would like to see. We’ve also met with other LEPs across the Midlands region and representatives of business networks and organisations.
“This draft strategy is the result of that work, and it outlines how the LEP intends to support businesses, help build a low carbon economy and ensure the importance of the natural and built environment of our region is recognised.”
He said it was right that the LEP allocated so much of the funding towards supporting its core SMEs, helping to ensure they had access to a skilled workforce.
“SMEs constitute the backbone of the Marches economy and are key drivers of growth and job creation. The type of support we could offer includes help with access to finance, the creation of an Enterprise Hub for the business needs of SMEs in the Marches and the development of specialist incubation space for start-ups,” he added.
Around £10m has been provisionally allocated towards supporting the shift towards a low carbon economy, by supporting energy efficient and renewable energy use and the adoption of low carbon technologies.
A further £6m has been earmarked for social inclusion programmes, including supporting those furthest from the job market into employment and the backing of community led approaches to targeting areas with high levels of unemployment.
“We will continue to work with our partners and stakeholders in the coming weeks and months as we further develop our plans, with the finalised strategy due to be with Government in January 2014,” said Wynn.
