The Department of Business Innovation and Skills has recently published initial guidance on the new EU funding round for LEPs.

and the Technical Annex

With the demise of the Regional Development  Agencies it foresees a big role for the LEPs in helping to distribute these resources. In total England will be allocated approximately €6.2n over this period.

What can we spend the money on – well there are ten main priorities and they are as follows

There is a lot of detail in the technical annex about what these monies could be spent on. At present within Government and with partners there are discussions happening on each of these priorities to focus down at a national level what the priorities are. These will then be included in the ‘partnership agreement between the UK and the EC which will detail how and on what broad areas the funds will be spent on. There will be further consultation on these.

LEPs are being asked to develop their ideas and priorities for these funds. A further announcement is expect in June which will detail the allocation between LEPs.