Archives for February 2011

Lord Heseltine is the chief 'dragon' in determining where the money goes

Let me throw a few terms at you and see if they stick.

Local Enterprise Partnership? No? How about Regional Growth Fund? Not heard of that one either?

Perhaps one day they'll occupy the same place in our hearts as the Regional Development Agency... or maybe not.

These are the government's new babies, designed to boost investment and innovation in the private sector.

The growth fund is a pot of money (£1.4bn over three years) private companies can bid for - so long as their projects help deliver jobs, and mitigate public sector job cuts.

It's a bit like the TV programme, Dragons' Den, and the chief dragon is Michael Heseltine.

Investing in regional businesses - opinion is divided on the best way forward

He heads up the panel which decides where the money goes, and has made it clear it's up to business to take the lead on this.

The first round of bids has come and gone, and West Country businesses have put their hands up for about £5m worth of funding.

Two criticisms have emerged. First, that £1.4bn - for the whole country - is not a lot of money. No surprise there.

But second, the South West could lose out to the Midlands or the North. Because we already have strong private industry here, we won't have the same need to mitigate public sector cuts - so we'll get less of the pot.

That remains to be seen, but industry leaders we've spoken to are fairly bullish they can pick up the slack.

And the onus falls on them to do this.

Which is where the Local Enterprise Partnerships come in.

These are rather nebulous creations, it seems to me: a heady mix of business leaders and council bosses, with some government seed money, working to enable rather than deliver growth - if you buy into business speak.

They are the replacement for the old RDAs - but may end up just being talking shops, say critics, who also argue the RDAs were more accountable, and could deliver longer-term projects over a wider geography.

There's only one LEP in the West so far - covering the old Avon area. Attempts to get them off the ground in Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire have failed to date.

If it all leaves you stone cold, then remember one thing; the government tells us the private sector will secure the recovery - and these are some of the tools it's supplying to help that happen.

Nineteen-year-old Hanna Evans, from Swindon, is one of the new faces of unemployment.

Figures released recently show almost one in five young people under the age of 24 are now out of work: that's just under a million people.

Nineteen-year-old Hanna Evans, from Swindon, is one of them.

She's been unemployed for a year - in a town which famously used to have more jobs than people wanting them.

She hates it, but is undeterred - and has been tramping the streets of her home town, with the now infamous placard, touting for work.

"I've tried the internet, tried going round town, handing my CV in: no luck. This is my last resort."

When we hooked her up with the Employment Minister Chris Grayling, he gave the stock answer - blaming Labour for the deficit, the recession and lack of jobs.

But the government has promised to help, lengthening work placements from two to eight weeks before benefits kick in.

And one of the town's two Tory MPs, Rob Buckland, told the BBC Politics Show on Sunday: "It's been a problem in Swindon for the last couple of years. It was badly hit by the recession in 07/08 - but is slowly coming out of that.

"The good news for people like Hanna is that the government recognises there are too many barriers to employment for young people. We need to be encouraging the kind of apprentice and mentoring schemes which don't really on too much paper work."

Much more on those measures in future Politics Shows.

What's interesting here though are the historical parallels.

Rewind to 1992 and the last economic slump.

We filmed Phil Rice, also from Wiltshire, putting his CV under posh car windscreens after being made redundant.

He's now working for Malmesbury Town Council, having found a job three months after making his desperate plea.

"I wish Hanna all the best. When I saw what she'd done on the news, I thought good for you and it brought it all back to me. It must be murder getting into employment nowadays and tough for years to come."

Hanna will be hoping she'll make a breakthrough - she's just lined up a few job interviews.

The economy picked up for Phil Rice in 1993: will it do the same this time round?

Many employers are only taking people on part-time, leaving those on benefits unsure about the value of coming off them for temporary work.

The government has promised to solve this eternal conundrum with the Universal Benefit - but will those reforms come too late for Hanna's generation?

If so, the pictures of Hanna touting for a job could come back to haunt the coalition.