LEP Start-up Fund
In order to help Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) quickly put their core operational capacity in place and to become self sustaining, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has made available £5 million in 2011-12 as a one-off start up fund.
To be successful, partnerships were asked to demonstrate:
- That they were without sufficient existing institutional capacity.
- That local partners will be co-funding activity;
- How the activity will be put on a self-sustaining basis in the near future, and that it will not need further central Government administrative funding;
- That the activities were related to start up, and were essential to the LEP’s ability to set priorities to drive private sector led growth and jobs in their area; and
- That activities were going to achieve the maximum efficiency, demonstrating innovative ways to do more with less
By the closing date we had received a total of 32 proposals: 4 LEPs chose not to bid. The total value of the calls on the fund was £5,523.762. As the Fund was heavily oversubscribed we developed a methodology to allocate the funding. We were supported in this work by an advisory panel.
Methodology
As the SUF is designed to help fill resource gaps at this time, the panel concluded that the proposals should be considered taking into account the following:
- Any expenditure on activity that goes beyond the end of this financial year should be scaled back on a pro-rata basis
- Activity that was considered outside the scope of the fund or for which other LEPs had not previously received central support was excluded
- Any potential conflict or duplication with Government priorities – for example setting up rival inward investment activity or the development of portals that do not align with (or risk duplicating) Government investment in businesslink.gov was excluded
- Requests for funding to support similar activities were benchmarked against each other to establish a reasonable cost for that activity. No partnership has been offered in excess of that benchmark figure for that category of project
- Marketing activities, specifically branding and brand development, judged not be to be in line the government’s own marketing guidelines were excluded
- Given the overall constraints on funding, some of the highest bids were scaled back.
Guidance
Local Enterprise Partnership Start-up Fund - Guidance Note (PDF, 63 Kb)
Please note that this guidance confirms that LEPs which already have substantial administrative capacity are highly unlikely to meet the criteria and that bids should cover LEP expenditure in this financial year only.
Application Form
Local Enterprise Partnership Start-up Fund - Application Form (DOC, 474 Kb)
Please send completed application forms to LocalEnterprisePartnerships@bis.gsi.gov.uk
This fund is now closed to applications. We anticipate making announcements of the successful bidders by 1st August 2011.
Contact us
Please send any queries relating to this fund to: LocalEnterprisePartnerships@bis.gsi.gov.uk or speak to your BIS local office.
