We prepare to say goodbye to Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the curious child of the 2010 Coalition Government, desperate to remove Regional Development Agencies but without any clear idea of what their replacement should be.

Why ‘curious’? Because they were private sector-led organisations making decisions on spending public money.  Because they were supposedly based on functional economic areas rather than political boundaries – though in reality all were coalitions of council areas prepared to do business with each other.

 And because their organisational form was not centrally determined – they varied from simply a regular partnership meeting to fully incorporated private companies.