NAO questions regional growth accountability

A lack of clarity over who is accountable for measuring the success of regional growth policy has contributed to a lack of certainty over outcomes, according to a new report.

The National Audit Office said no evidence exists to assess whether local enterprise partnerships (LEP), enterprise zones and city deals, and funding mechanisms including the Regional Growth Fund (RGF), are capable of delivering value for money.
It said three years after the local growth white paper, there is no plan to evaluate performance across the range of different programmes.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO said: “Three years on from the 2010 white paper, the new LEPs are taking shape and jobs are being created.  “But the transition from the old to the new schemes has not been orderly and there has been a significant dip in growth spending.

“To secure value for money from both the existing schemes and the new £2 billion Growth Deals, central government needs to make sure that there is enough capacity centrally and locally to oversee initiatives, that timescales are realistic and that there is clear accountability.”

The report said that the government has no plan to consider the long-term effectiveness of its regional growth policies because it wanted to devolve responsibility to local bodies. But it found that because local growth programmes often cover more than one local authority area, the system may be undermined.
The report said: “From our telephone interviews with local enterprise partnerships and local authorities, 34 out of 43 interviewees thought that the accountability arrangements were complex and 18 were unclear about them.”

The NAO report also found that the enterprise zones and the RGF have also been slow to create jobs and face a significant challenge to produce the number of jobs expected. The estimate of jobs to be created by enterprise zones by 2015 has dropped from 54,000 to between 6,000 and 18,000.