Local employer engagement or distant elites? Local enterprise partnerships and employment and skills in England

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the responsibilities and membership of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England in the light of devolution of employment and skills responsibilities. Through the theoretical lens of ‘hollowing out’ and a direct comparison with the late-Thatcherite Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) of the 1990s, the paper argues that LEPs represent a fresh, market-driven attempt by the government to alter the institutional framework for meeting local labour market needs through ‘local business leadership’. However, through a synthesis of publicly available data across all LEPs, the paper shows that while LEPs assume important strategic and practical roles, their structure, resourcing and sectoral affiliations are poorly aligned for the engagement of local employers. Rather, it is argued, LEPs may be characterised as distant business elites, with only weak connections to local employment and skills priorities. Conclusions are drawn about the implications of distant and elite LEPs boards for future employment and skills policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Employer engagement
• employment and skills
• devolution

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Professor Mark Stuart for comments on a presentation of an early version of this paper. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions for strengthening the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Companies House records, available from https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk.

2. The ONS webtool at https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/lep/contents.aspx brings together administrative data for labour supply, economic inactivity, employment by population, qualifications, claimant counts, labour demand, employment by industry, and business counts by sector. ONS definitions and related terminology are given in the definitions section therein.

3. FAME – Financial Analysis Made Easy (FAME), published by Bureau van Dijk, Moody’s Analytics, available at: https://fame.bvdinfo.com/. Accessed on 1 June 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick McGurk

Dr Patrick McGurk is Senior Lecturer in Management Practice and Director of Skills and Employer Engagement at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Business and Management. He was previously Head of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Greenwich and has several years of experience of management education for corporate clients across multiple sectors in the UK and Germany. Dr McGurk serves on the Mayor of London’s Skills for Londoners Stakeholder Advisory Group.

Richard Meredith

Richard Meredith is a PhD student within the Work and Employment Relations Unit at University of Greenwich. His research interest is employer engagement with state employment and skills schemes, particularly in the case of the UK. He has 23 years public sector experience (including the UK Public Employment Service) and 13 years industry experience in Employer Intermediary Services (including Business Link and Train to Gain).