In recent months, the IOEE and SFEDI Group team has been working more closely with many of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).
Ruth Lowbridge, Executive Chair of SFEDI, spoke at the LEP conference last month and Leigh Sear from SFEDI Solutions has helped the North East LEP and Liverpool LEPs map out the business support landscape in their regions. Leigh is also supporting the North East LEP as it develops a diagnostic tool which will enable businesses to find the business support that has been mapped out. The tool will sit on the North East LEPs Growth Hub.
SFEDI Solutions is also helping the Lancashire LEP tackle challenges around the learning and skills landscape through their innovative skills project with Ingeous. In addition to this the SFEDI led project Apprenticemakers is helping LEPs use the peer to peer hub as a way of providing apprenticeship support to small businesses.
All of this work has helped us gain an insight into the varied approach to LEP delivery. Across England there are 39 LEPs which aim to bring together the public and private sector to influence and support local approaches to economic development. Many of the LEPs (about 25) also run Growth Hubs, which aim to enable businesses to tap into local and national business support.
As SFEDI’s work with the LEPs continues in the coming months we’d love to understand more about if, and how, the IOEE membership is engaging with the LEPs. SFEDI is contributing to a workshop with the Growth Hubs next month which will help to shape their offer going forward, therefore we’re keen to make sure that we’ve got a good picture of the views of the membership prior to that session.
We’d like to know how much you know about your local LEP and Growth Hub, whether you’ve found them to be a useful source of support for the development of skills for small business, and what thoughts you have for the development of these going forward.