Minutes of a Meeting of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership
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Minutes of a Meeting of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership held on Friday, 14 March 2014 at Council Chamber, Cockermouth Town Hall, Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13 9NP at 9.30 am Board Members Present: George Beveridge (Chair), Jackie Arnold (Vice-Chair), Stephen Broughton, Colin Glover, William Jefferson, Graham Lamont, Marna McMillan, Katie Milbourn, Moira Tattersall, Peter Thornton and Stewart Young Executive Members Present: Gillian Bishop (Interim LEP Business Manager), Jackie Currie, Gillian Elliott (Assistant Director - Economic Development, CCC) and Rob Johnston (Chief Executive - Cumbria Chamber of Commerce) Also in Attendance: Item 5 Paul Hammond – Mott Macdonald Professor Glyn Owen – Mott Macdonald Phil Wooley – Grant Thornton Item 6 Suzanne Caldwell – Cumbria Chamber of Commerce Sara Turnbull – Cumbria County Council Item 7 Ginny Murphy – Cumbria County Council Minutes Jackie Currie – Cumbria County Council 1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE An apology for absence was received from Mrs B Cannon. 2 MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING The minutes of the previous meeting held on Friday 21 February 2014 were agreed with the following amendment:- Minute No 9 – Governance Report on Page 14 last paragraph on bottom page instead of ‘Delete Chamber of Commerce and CBI from a) and b) on the list of business sectors and…’ amend to read ‘Delete Chamber of Commerce and CBI from a) and b) and replace with a) large business and b) SMEs ..’ The Chair requested that the following be put on record:- · That it is not the place of the LEP Board to replace the Private Sector Advisory Panel, and · That the value of the contribution of the Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, alongside other partners was noted. 3 UPDATE FROM THE CHAIR & VICE CHAIR Senior Whitehall Official The Chair reported that further to discussions in Whitehall he can confirm that Martin Williams, a Senior official at BIS would be the new senior Whitehall contact for Cumbria LEP. He, along with the Vice Chair and Interim LEP Manager would be meeting up with Martin in the next couple of weeks. Engagement with Cumbria MPs In relation to engagement with the Cumbrian MPs around the SEP the Chair reported that he and Colin Glover had met with John Stephenson MP and given him a copy of the draft SEP. He advised that he would contact Mr Stephenson next week to discuss any specific comments he would like to make. He had also visited Jamie Reed MP, who, although he had many questions, seemed very supportive of the SEP. He had spoken to Tony Cunningham MP, who was generally supportive, and they would be meeting up in April in London to talk further about the SEP. Jackie Arnold had contacted John Woodcock MP, Peter Thornton had spoken to Tim Farron MP and the Chair had also met up with Rory Stewart MP in January about the SEP. Subject to further discussions with John Stevenson all MPs were in support of the plan. European Funding Investment The Chair reported that he was aware of discussions and debate in Whitehall about the devolution of decision making for European Investment Funding. The outcomes of the debate were implying that the sub committees set up to deal with European funding applications, which were currently LEP sub groups would become national sub committees. This was being discussed by the LEP Chairs at the next LEP Network event and he would report further findings once this meeting had taken place. 2 Local Action Groups (LAGs) The Chair had received correspondence from DEFRA in relation the LAG groups. These groups had been set up by DEFRA and were made up of representatives from businesses, public agencies and local community bodies. The group considered grant applications and acted as a steering group for the RDPE programme. The correspondence had been around the alignment of the work of the LAGs with the ESIF. Katie Milbourn would be attending an event organised by one of the LAGs on 19 March and she would raise this with them then (Action: KM). It may be possible to invite a representative/s from the LAG/s to a future meeting of the LEP. 4 MATTERS ARISING NOT COVERED ELSEWHERE ON THE AGENDA Planning & Housing Task Group Gillian Bishop had spoken to Phil Houghton Chair of the Planning and Housing Task Group following their presentation to the LEP Board in January. She would be meeting up with him in the next few weeks to discussion the future direction of the group. 5 STRATEGIC ECONOMIC PLAN a) SEP Implementation/Delivery Plan Paul Hammond, Professor Glyn Owen and Phil Wooley were in attendance for this item. Board members received a report which provided an update on the work on Cumbria’s Strategic Economic Plan and associated funding through the Government’s Growth Deal. The report covered details of the programme of activity and ‘the ask’ from Government, and updated the SEP document to reflect the programme of activity. In relation to the SEP Delivery Plan the plan sets out Cumbria’s application for Growth Deal funds of £23m in 2015/16 to deliver an increase in employment of 11,635 by the end of the Strategic Economic Plan’s period, with Gross Value Added (GVA) £437m higher, and 2,392 more dwellings with the Plan than would otherwise have been the case. These numbers were provisional and would change as projects were finalised. The SEP document and delivery plan took into consideration the feedback from Whitehall on the draft Plan submitted in December 2013. This feedback praised the overall approach but suggested more detail on actions and deliverable was required. At the LEP Board’s last meeting it was reported that during February 2014 partners had submitted 75 proposals for Growth Fund financial support using a pro forma (an outline business case) suggested by Mott MacDonald/Grant Thornton that corresponded to accepted appraisal criteria for UK Government investments – Green Book Appraisal. 3 Since then the consultants had been refining 15 projects that were agreed by the LEP Board as worthy of further development. The details and summary descriptions of the projects were set out in the Delivery Plan which also communicated in summary the individual project proposals. Paul Hammond reminded the Board of their commitment in previous meetings to the development of a pipeline of projects that could access Growth Deal and future funding opportunities especially via the ESIF, to Cumbria’s future economic well-being and growth. It was therefore proposed to continue working with projects designated as “amber” to ensure that the county economy had a portfolio of development opportunities that could be brought forward as the market and funders demanded. The delivery plan described this approach in the context of a Cumbria Strategic Investment Fund for the period post 2015/16. In relation to the priority on nuclear and energy Marna McMillan said that although she represented ‘energy’ on the LEP she had not been consulted on this section. She had concerns that this nuclear and energy section had very little detail on other forms of energy. In response Paul Hammond said that the plan included proposals for alternative energy in the Port of Workington project. The issue for Mott Macdonald was that they could only work up projects that had come forward and only a few of them were about other forms of energy. It was not possible for them to include other forms of energy if projects were not forthcoming. However, they noted the comments and would aim to include a reference to alternative forms of energy in the final plan. Stewart Young requested a breakdown on the £12bn investment stated be provided. Paul Hammond agreed to forward this information. The Board discussed the skills development (p44 of delivery plan) and the fact that there was no mention of engineering skills? They felt that this should be tied in to nuclear and advance manufacturing. These comments were noted and supplementary information would be included in the Annex on skills In relation to the detail on Page 46 Peter Thornton commented that the relationship between the numbers of dwellings against the number of jobs seemed mismatched. Professor Owen explained that the proposal was for the number of dwellings would be substantially increased in the final version of the delivery plan, and explained the rationale for this. The Board then discussed the areas within the county which had huge potential for housing developments such as Derwent Forest and MOD Longtown. They felt that the document should reference how partners were coming together to develop capacity to deliver housing needs and it was AGREED that board members should send comments on this to Gillian Bishop and she would work with Gillian Elliot to ensure this was reflected in the final document (Action: All/GB/PE/PH) 4 Stephen Broughton felt that was a lack of information on Page 36 about the vibrant rural and visitor economy. Professor Owen said the projects for this were still being worked up and there would be substantially more information included in the final version of the plan. b) Updated SEP Document The LEP Board had received an updated version of the SEP document. Gillian Bishop advised that the December 2013 version of the SEP, which was endorsed by the Board, and submitted on the 19 December 2013, in line with Government deadlines, had been updated to reflect the emerging Delivery Plan focus, and to address the comments provided by the feedback from Greg Clarke. The key updates in the document are as follows: • Clearer articulation of the ‘ask’ • Updated Economic Picture • Strengthened ‘Making it Happen’ Section linking into the Delivery Plan details; areas such as Nuclear and Energy Excellence have been updated further to ongoing discussions with partners and project emerging information • Updated Investment Programme information, to support the details in the Delivery Plan • Revised Freedoms and Flexibilities section to reflect current position The document would continue to be refined to take on board the comments of LEP Board members today, and to reflect the development of the Annexes and the Delivery Plan, to ensure that a robust and compelling case was submitted to Government by the 31 March 2014.