LEP Capacity Fund

In order to help Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) understand the issues facing businesses in their areas and to allow them to develop and prioritise action plans, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has made available a £4 million capacity fund over four years.

All LEPs who have been asked to put their boards in place by Ministers are eligible to receive money from the Capacity Fund. The first round of the Fund saw the allocation of the first £1m through a competitive bidding process. Round 2 of the fund has now been launched and will see the allocation of the remaining £3 million.

For round 2 of the Fund BIS have taken on board Partnership’s comments about the need to simplify the process. As such for round 2 there will be no bidding process. To ensure compatibility with Government finance rules LEPs will be required to give some indication of how they intend to use their allocation before a formal grant offer is made.

To enable Partnerships to have some certainty for the future and to think about their activities over the medium term each Partnership’s allocation covers the next 3 financial years with an equal amount of funding being made available in each year. The Department will consider alternative spend profiles of the allocation on a case by case basis.

As a further response to the request for simplification the fund is now aimed at the broad objective of supporting LEPs to address the issues that will best help them deliver local growth.

Guidance

Local Enterprise Partnership Capacity Fund - guidance note, December 2011 (PDF, 39 Kb) 

Application Form

An application form to make a bid for funding is available Local Enterprise Partnership Capacity Fund - application form, December 2011 (DOC, 476 Kb) 

Contact us

Please send any queries relating to the Capacity Fund to: LocalEnterprisePartnerships@bis.gsi.gov.uk 

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