£11Bn for the Midlands Growth
Lord Heseltine launched his major report on economic growth in Birmingham on Wednesday the 31st of October.
The review calls on government to pass control of £49bn of public investment from central government to regions across the country.
The recommendations made by Lord Heseltine include:
- The Government to set out clearly a comprehensive national growth strategy.
- Create a National Growth Council, chaired by the Prime Minister.
- Local Enterprise Partnerships to develop their own tailored local economic plans. From 2015-16 they would compete for a share of a single national pot to support growth over a five year period.
- Under the current spending review this would account for £49bn of central public spending on skills, local infrastructure, employment support, housing, business support services and innovation. This would be supplemented by the current approximate £9bn of European common strategic framework funds.
- Government and private sector to work together to create a strong, locally based business support infrastructure.
- All sectors of industry to have a formal relationship with a government department, building on the examples in the automobile and aerospace industries.
- Lord Heseltine presented his report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Business Secretary Vince Cable. The Government will now consider the recommendations.
Responding to the report Leader of Birmingham City Council, Sir Albert Bore said:
'I very much welcome Lord Heseltine's report, his passionate commitment to localis... Amongst the many proposals in the report, by far the most important is the creation of a single funding pot for economic development, infrastructure investment and skills which would be devolved to local areas...Giving the cities control of that range and scale of resources would enable us to drive growth and job creation more effectively than ever before.'
'This is an extremely wide ranging and comprehensive report and naturally we will not support all of its proposals in detail. But by being characteristically bold Lord Heseltine has made a valuable contribution to a debate we have been leading with the other cities. It is vital that the Government and the other political parties now give it the positive response it deserves.'
