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LGA - Councils respond to publication of Industrial Strategy

Lord Porter, Chairman of the Local Government Association, says councils need greater freedom and funding from central government to build more homes, secure the infrastructure essential to economic growth, improve our roads, equip people with the skills they need to succeed and increase access to fast and reliable digital connectivity for all.

"We can only truly build a world-class economy if every local economy across the country is firing on all cylinders. 

"The Industrial Strategy is an opportunity to bring together fragmented national growth-related funding which sees £23 billion spread out across 70 funding streams and managed by 22 government departments and agencies. Giving local areas the power to target funding at projects that will provide more certainty for businesses and investors would benefit local people, improve productivity and strengthen the national economy.

"Our costly and inefficient centralised employment and skills system is a prime example of this. Worth £10.5 billion a year and fragmented across 20 national schemes, it fails to best meet the needs of communities and employers across England. Devolving this national employment and skills funding to local government would allow councils to build on their track record of helping more people into work and plugging growing skills gaps.

"Local areas in England have been allocated £5.3 billion in EU regeneration by 2020 to create jobs, build infrastructure and boost local growth across the country. The Government needs to work with local government to develop a UK regional aid scheme which replaces all of this EU regeneration funding and gives local areas more say over how it is spent after Brexit."

Related information: Developing a modern industrial strategy

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