What are LEPs?

Local Enterprise Partnerships are locally-owned partnerships between local authorities and businesses. They play a central role in determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and the creation of local jobs.

LEPs come in all shapes and sizes and the make-up of Boards, in terms of public and private-sector participants, varies greatly too. Inclusivity is central to the Network, which aims to reflect the diversity embodied in LEPs across England. LEPs are evolving from the bottom up - free from central control and shaped according to local need: the LEP Network is based on these principles too and is driven by the priorities of its members.

About The LEP Network

The LEP Network is a gateway to news and information that enables Local Enterprise Partnerships to come together to discuss issues of shared importance, engage with Government, and share knowledge and good practice. It assists LEPs to ‘self-serve’ with their troubleshooting, capacity-building and problem-solving needs. The LEP Network’s core programme consists of events; electronic forums for regular communication; a monthly bulletin; and an annual benchmarking report of LEP-area economies.

The LEP Network is facilitated by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and is resourced through a combination of in-kind contributions from the BCC and its partners and grant-funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). You can read the BCC's proposal to government for a national LEP Network here, and the work breakdown structure here..

How to get involved...

There are several ways you can get involved - by attending events; providing news and other material for the website and monthly bulletins; and contributing to online discussions.

The LEP Network holds events throughout the year: some are directed primarily at LEP Boards while others are open to the wider community of interest around economic development.

The LEP Network also has a Business Representatives Forum, drawn from across national business groups and sector organisations. This is a forum for business groups to raise common issues about local economic development from their members, in a way that can be fed into the Network.