ADVANTAGE West Midlands was told it was assessed as the best performing Regional Development Agency in the UK – on the day it invited its 326 staff to apply for voluntary redundancy.
The National Audit Office said AWM had achieved a maximum performance score for the second time in its history. EMDA – its equivalent body in the East Midlands also got top marks.
The review of all regional development agencies (RDAs) by the government spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Advantage West Midlands was rated as performing ‘strongly’ in all areas assessed. It’s the second time in a row the NAO has awarded the Agency the maximum rating – once in 2007 and again this year.
This result comes after recent independent evaluations showed that the Agency’s return on investment had gone up nine per cent in the past year to £8.14 in economic benefits for the region for every £1 invested.
But it also came on the day that AWM chief executive Mick Laverty held face-to-face meetings with all the staff at the agency to tell them that they could apply for voluntary redundancy on standard civil service terms. The deadline for applications is early August, and some staff could leave as early as October.
AWM will be replaced by a number of Local Enterprise Partnerships which will have a much reduced budget compared to Regional Development Agencies.
“The fallout from the scrapping of AWM reads like a lamentable script from a tired soap opera.” Read Marc Reeves’s blog here
Mr Laverty said of the Audit Office findings: “This is welcome news against the backdrop of the worst recession in a generation, and a fragile economy coming to terms with massive savings in the public sector.
“This agency has made a very positive impact. These NAO results come in addition to the fact that we have also met or exceeded most of our targets in the past year according to our year end results.”
Mr Laverty said that despite a reduced budget, the agency created or safeguarded more than 17,000 jobs for the region in the year and supported nearly 29,000 businesses. It also nearly doubled its target of attracting private investment at a time when money was extremely tight.
“Our staff should be very proud of these many acknowledgements of their hard work and commitment to the people and businesses of this region,” he said.
AWM chairman Sir Roy McNulty said: “This organisation is run in a very lean and efficient way. Contrary to what some commentators would say about RDAs, Advantage West Midlands is really focused on keeping costs down. This is evidenced by a Treasury review which confirmed RDAs as the most cost effective of all the public bodies with administration costs of only 7p in every £1.
“RDAs know change is coming. We’re ready for it and we continue to work with ministers and officials on how to put this change into practice. We hope and believe that these findings should inform whatever future structures for economic development finally emerge.”
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