The National Audit Office has issued a warning over the lack of accountability around funding for local enterprise partnerships.
The government auditors accused the Department for Communities and Local Government of failing to set LEPs quantifiable objectives for what it hopes to achieve through growth deals, making it difficult to assess how they have contributed to economic growth.
Funding allocations for England’s 39 LEPs are forecast to rise to £12bn between 2015-16 and 2020-21. However, the NAO report found that LEPs themselves have serious reservations about their capacity to contribute to economic growth without adequate resources and access to skilled staff.
Only 5% of LEPs considered that the resources available to them were sufficient to meet the expectations placed on them by government.
In addition, 69% of LEPs reported that they did not have sufficient staff and 28% did not think that their staff were sufficiently skilled.
A DCLG spokesman said the report “misses the point” and stressed the “important leadership role” of the LEPs in driving forward the government’s devolution agenda.
The spokesman added: “They are pivotal to driving local economic growth and have an important leadership role in devolution. That is why we have announced this week a further £1.8bn through a new round of growth deals.”
The NAO said the department had acted to promote standards of governance and transparency in LEPs, which all had frameworks in place to ensure regularity, propriety and value for money by March 2015. However, it said the department had not tested the implementation of such assurance frameworks at the time that growth deals were finalised.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: “LEPs’ role has expanded rapidly and significantly but they are not as transparent to the public as we would expect, especially given they are now responsible for significant amounts of taxpayers’ money.”
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