Latest news & events

We want the Autumn Statement to support initiatives which accelerate growth. It is also important that the fiscal system rewards, rather than penalises, growth and there are a number of things that we feel Government can do to avoid these perverse incentives.

Our eight key asks of the Autumn Statement are:

1. A serious devolution of power and funding to enable local leaders and businesses to drive, and derive benefit from, growth at the sub-national level.
2. Commitment to tackle the flaws in the funding syste m which mean that upper tier authorities in fast growing areas are financially worse off because of growth.
3. Bold measures, and new financial incentives, which encourage all local authorities to reinvest the funding raised through mechanisms such as New Homes Bonus and Business Rates retention into long-term capital programmes to stimulate growth.
4. Clarity on the inclusion of New Homes Bonus in the Single Local Growth Fund.
5. Accelerated funding and other measures during 2014 to enable local authorities and LEPs to fast-track infrastructure projects which re lease homes and jobs. This could be done, for example, through top-slicing other budget s and/or advancing the provisional Local Major Transport Scheme funding to enable local prioritisation and give greater flexibility. We believe that this should replace further ad-hoc competitions for funding which add unnecessary bureaucracy, cost money to manage, slow delivery and the hold-up growth.
6. Immediate release to local bodies of the £250m whic h has been earmarked for extending superfast broadband coverage to enable roll-out to be accelerated particularly for business parks, other areas with large concentrations of business and the rural areas.
7. Real disincentives to address, the issue of landown ers and developers ‘land-banking’ and holding-up development. This should be alongside incentives to accelerate delivery.
8. A quick resolution to the issue of overlapping LEPs, as advocated by Lord Heseltine, and to remove the confusion that this is creating, for businesses and investment, prior to making decisions on European funding and the Single Local Growth Fund.