Member Article

£2bn pot for LEPs in Osborne's Spending Review

Local Enterprise Partnerships will be able to bid on a £2bn pot to drive growth, the Chancellor announced in his Spending Review.

The sum is significantly less than the near £50m Lord Heseltine had called for in his “No Stone Unturned” review, and with 39 LEPs the single pot amounts to around £51m a year for each.

Cuts to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are just 6%, while the Cabinet Office will have its budget slashed by 10%.

Mr Osborne also promised £50bn gross spending on infrastructure in 2015, and said the Government will spend more on roads than had occurred in over half a century. The figure actually represents a real terms fall of 1.7% from the 2014-15 infrastructure budget.

A capital spending budget for transport was announced at £9.5bn between 2015-16.

Details of how spending will play out for the regions will be announced by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander today.

Public sector workers were delivered more bad news as the Chancellor called an end to automatic pay rises and said some 144,000 fewer people will work in the public sector by 2015-16.

The Chancellor set out three principles on which the Spending Review were based: reform, growth and fairness.

Total managed expenditure will be £745bn by 2015-16, £120bn lower than it would have been had spending continued as it had under Labour, Mr Osborne told the House.

Mr Osborne opened his speech with: “We act on behalf of every taxpayer and every future taxpayer who wants high quality public services that we can afford. We act on behalf of everyone that believes we should live within our means.”

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said Mr Osborne had failed the country as demonstrated in falling living standards and lacklustre growth.

At the stand, Mr Balls said: “Why didn’t he listen to the IMF and bring forward £10bn of infrastructure spending this year?”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .