Growth Deal

Growth Deal 1

The Marches LEP secured £75.3m in the first round of Growth Deal funding in 2014. The funding focused mainly on road infrastructure projects to enable housing and employment sites to be developed, with an element invested in skills capital projects to improve facilities and equipment for training in the advanced manufacturing sector in line with industry needs.

Growth Deal 2

The Marches LEP secured £7.7m in the second round of Growth Deal funding. The funding focused entirely on supporting the rollout of superfast broadband to enable more households and businesses to access superfast provision, particularly addressing market failure in rural areas.

Growth Deal 3

The latest award of Growth Deal 3 funding was announced in March 2017 providing a boost of £21.9 million for the Marches LEP area with a focus on innovation and skills, to help create jobs, support businesses and encourage growth.

Value for money on LEP projects

The delivery of projects can be complex, requiring a robust LEP governance structure. The Marches LEP recognises this and has ensured that a strong structure is in place which provides a robust and accountable process for assessing and prioritising schemes. The principles of this approach have been adopted by the LEP Partnership Board and integrated into the LEP governance structure, in considering the wider range of LEP projects coming through the Marches SEP.

How projects are decided

The framework provides a clear decision-making process, supporting the development of integrated investment packages that contribute directly to the delivery of the SEP’s economic objectives/targets. It also ensures a robust risk management process which will continue to ensure accountability, deliverability and value for money. The framework, which is compliant with the HM Treasury Green Book appraisal scheme, is detailed within section 6 of the LEP’s Accountability and Assurance Framework.

The Green Book scheme is also followed by project promoters when they prepare the business case for their projects. This requires project promoters to use the ‘Five Case Model’, there are five cases which should be included when developing the business case for a project:

• Strategic case – why is the scheme needed?
• Economic case – is the scheme good value for money?
• Financial case – is the scheme financially sustainable?
• Commercial case – can the scheme be procured and constructed?
• Management case – is the scheme deliverable?

For transport infrastructure projects, project promoters are required to conduct business case appraisals and value for money assessments using the Department for Transport’s WebTAG tool kit.