The Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) is a Government initiative that funds projects that will lead directly to the creation of new businesses and the growth of existing businesses in deprived areas.
Plymouth is making a bid for up to £20 million to fund local projects within the most deprived neighbourhoods in the city. The bid is being led by Plymouth City Council with the help of many organisations throughout the city, and will be submitted to a regional panel in September. If successful, the bid will be assessed by a national panel in November and we will receive notification of the outcome in December. Projects could then commence as early as January 2007.
This is an excellent opportunity for Plymouth. Plymouth City Council and its partners have been working hard in a very short timescale to ensure that residents and businesses across the city have been given the opportunity to voice their views on why they feel Plymouth has a low level of business start ups and what the barriers are to the growth of existing businesses.
By looking at what barriers are in place to prevent individuals from starting up their own businesses and becoming more enterprising will help to identify what can be done to raise individual's and therefore as a result the City's aspirations.
The draft bid has now been prepared and will be presented tonight at 6pm at Plymouth Albion and will be the last opportunity for individuals and businesses to influence the contents of Plymouth's bid.
The bid has been prepared further to consideration of the feedback from the 254 individuals that attended one of the various consultation events that took place across the city in July. 125 businesses have completed a business survey so far and over 30 stakeholder interviews.
The group co-ordinating the preparation of the bid which is being managed by Amanda Bembridge at the City Council includes delivery agents from the RDA, Government Office, Enterprise Plymouth, Plymouth Business Growth, Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, The Wolseley Trust and The Millfields Trust.
This has certainly been a good example of partnership working in the City. Further evidence of partnership working has been demonstrated by representatives of key sectors that have come together to look at opportunities for co-ordinating delivery of projects between existing suppliers in the areas of Youth Enterprise and in the Creative Sector.
This is exactly what we need to encourage. We all want the city to prosper and we all need to work together to achieve that. Richard Thomas, who is chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses and fellow director of the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, spoke about the importance of partnership working in a recent column.
Members of the group have commented to me that the consultation process has identified issues that have made many of the group question previously held perceptions and that the process has been extremely valuable. Open minds are obviously crucial in order to get the most accurate picture, as we all know it is easy to assume we know something but it is important to check our understanding. As I understand it a clear message has emerged and the value of this process itself has been recognised and will complement the work already being undertaken by Plymouth Business Growth in implementation of the City Growth Strategy and the Economic Vision for the City when that is launched later this year by the City Council.
For those of you who can't attend the meeting tonight, details of Plymouth's LEGI Bid and the feedback from the various consultation meetings are available at www.plymouth.gov.uk
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