Uniting the Conurbation welcomes the government’s recently announced £66.3m investment in our local economy which Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership (DLEP) says could result in the creation of 25,000 jobs, the building of more than 3,000 homes and the generation of up to £500m in public and private investment.
It is nevertheless odd to see that such a large injection of public funding was not secured directly by our elected local government authorities but by a “partnership” which is dominated by a small group of unelected business people. It is also very strange that, although the original invitation to our conurbation to bid for a City Deal stipulated that it must “contain proposals for stronger governance” across our “economic area,” the DLEP Strategic Economic Plan (the basis of the bid) says nothing of substance about this.
We must have on-going and meaningful dialogue between our representatives in local government and the business community which drives economic growth. Queen Victoria’s day was the heyday of municipal enterprise, whose initiative and breadth of vision created an infrastructure which allowed industry to prosper. Unfortunately the view from Whitehall seems to be that such dialogue was not taking place and indeed, today’s fractured structure of local government in the South-east Dorset Conurbation is clearly not up to such a mighty task. Does that make it right to hand the purse-strings of public funding to an unelected body such as DLEP? .
This is a time of very expensive and disjointed local government. The challenge for Whitehall is to grasp the nettle and give our conurbation a single unitary authority which will provide stronger governance for our economic area and meaningful dialogue with the business community. That is the democratic way forward and the need is truly urgent.