Pickles praises LEPs for supporting housing developments

His praise comes at the launch of a report (80-page / 1.4MB PDF) from think tank Localis and Lloyds Banking Group on infrastructure funding. 

The communities secretary highlighted that Lancashire’s LEP had used £7 million of its £13m Government funding to support the construction of more than 500 homes. The remainder of its funding has been assigned to schemes that would go ahead in 2012/13, and is subject to Government approval.

LEPs are partnerships between local authorities and businesses intended to drive sustainable economic growth and job creation in their area. They have access to the £500m Growing Places fund, which is designed to drive economic growth by addressing infrastructure problems.

The Localis and Lloyds Banking Group report said that LEPs have a potentially important role offering advice to member authorities and helping to drive economies of scale across authority boundaries. It said that they should seek to serve as a non-mandatory 'receipt pooling' function for business rate and CIL monies in order to facilitate cross-authority collaboration more generally.

The report recommended that LEPs invite a leading figure from the financial services industry onto their board to held advise on the new funding options available, and that they seek to sell an additional Enterprise Zone/Tax Increment Financing scheme to the private sector.

The report also recommended that local authorities that receive new homes bonus payments for allowing homes to be built in their area could use this money to set up equity schemes. The local authority would take a stake in new homes to lower the cost for the purchaser.

The report's main recommendation is that the Government set up and help to fund a £30 billion national infrastructure bank. This would allow growth to continue despite funding cuts, it said.

Pickles spoke at the launch of the report yesterday and praised it as "an excellent contribution to the debate on this crucial issue" according to an Inside Housing report.

The launch of the report coincides with a leaked letter (5-page / 1.6MB PDF) published by the BBC in which Business Secretary Vince Cable called for the Prime Minister to increase support for housing.

Cable said that "galvanising the housing construction market would have a much wider economic impact in stimulating innovation and growth".

"There is a particular problem with financing; the housing associations, which could drive recovery, are unable to mobilise funds on any scale," the letter said. "We should have the same level of commitment across Government to getting housing moving as is beginning to happen for infrastructure."