Government Offices represent the interests of 11 Government Departments in the English regions. They support the Departments’ aims of improving economic performance, skills, productivity and innovation by influencing the priorities set by Government and regional partners for the regional economic development, and assisting their effective delivery.
More information on the national picture
As part of its role Government Office for the West Midlands works closely with Advantage West Midlands (AWM) to champion the creation of an enterprise friendly environment including challenging and supporting local and regional partners to ensure factors such as transport, planning, skills etc, are focused on delivering an environment that is conducive to business creation and growth. We support AWM’s delivery of the business support elements of the Regional Economic Strategy (RES). We work closely with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) who leads in the manufacturing and service sectors. We are also in touch with representative organisations and companies in order to gauge the effectiveness of business support and explain government policy.
More precisely we have been active in:
• organising regional visits by Ministers and Senior Civil Servants to meet a range of businesses and business representatives;
• supporting the Regional Minister on matters relating to business and industry;
• providing regional intelligence and analysis;
• supporting Local Areas who were successful with their bids under the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) (e.g. Coventry);
• development, negotiation and on-going monitoring of Local Area Agreements (LAAs) to ensure they reflect economic indicators/targets relevant to the region and reflect the priorities of the West Midlands RES;
• promoting the energy agenda as it relates to BERR’s interests;
• working with AWM, Local Authorities and partners to improve the delivery and simplification of business support through the Business Support Simplification Programme; and
• working with regional partners to take forward the recommendations of the Sub National Review, including helping to develop arrangements for the single integrated regional strategy from 2011.
To take forward this work we participate in a wide variety of steering groups and boards.
