LEP’s ‘bureaucratic culture and unwieldy governance’ could damage inward investment, report warns

THE demise of Leeds and Partners is ostensibly because of a desire to ensure inward investment is driven by the city region, rather than the city in competition with its neighbouring authorities.

It is not a new idea. A report produced in 2011 set out the benefits of city region-wide collaboration but instead Marketing Leeds rebranded and restructured into the ill-fated Leeds and Partners.

The latest report, Maximising the Opportunities for Inward Investment in Leeds City Region, acknowledges that the reasons identified three years ago “were still valid today”. Increased competition and a need to save money have made the case harder to ignore but the perception of Leeds and Partners as an underperforming organisation proved compelling.

The management team from Leeds and Partners had input into the report, and a key point in their defence was that the organisation was “less than three years into a plan which was aimed on ‘transition and transformation’ of the function in years 1-2, and is now in the ‘development and delivery’ phase”.

The decision by the report’s authors to reject this argument by choosing to abolish the organisation at exactly the point that the transformation should start to reap its rewards is telling.

However there was some sympathy with the notion that Leeds and Partners had become an organisation with a private sector mentality and was credited for working with “pace, flexibility and business orientated culture”. The potential danger of this approach being lost within the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership’s bureaucratic culture and system of unwieldy governance was highlighted as a serious issue.

The report also warns about under-resourcing the inward investment arm, and dismisses the suggestion that a budget of £750,000-£1m would be sufficient for an effective operation. Instead it recommends spending £1.1m-£1.3m a year to fund a team of up to 16 people, led by an experienced individual in the newly-created role of director of inward investment, and with an operational budget of up to £500,000.

This model will produce cost savings of £950,000 overall, almost all of which comes from the loss of the corporate functions of Leeds and Partners.

That in itself is a further condemnation of the organisation’s management, and there will be enormous pressure to ensure that those mistakes aren’t repeated when the Local Enterprise Partnership takes control.