"A strong Birmingham is good for the surrounding areas," says Martin Yardley when we speak recently following a Regional Summit of West Midlands LEPs held at the 2013 Birmingham MadeMe Design Expo this June.
"With the formation of the LEPs we are seeing a stronger dialogue between the areas that form the whole sub region at present. With the three LEPs of Greater Birmingham, the Black Country and Coventry & Warwickshire working together more and more in the future we can see a way to strengthening the sub regions.
Martin Yardley is Chief Executive of Coventry and Warwickshire LEP (C&W LEP) and has been working in this role for around a year. As a planner he has been involved in economic development over many years working as Director of Coventry City Council when not moving forward C&W LEP.
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"What we have seen since the formation of the LEPs in the three Chairmen, Stewart Towe in the Black Country, Sir Peter Rigby here in Coventry & Warwickshire and Andy Street in Greater Birmingham and Solihull, along with other LEP chairs, is strong working relationships developing and these have led to strategic level understanding about the need for business support to cross boundaries as businesses very clearly do not recognise administrative boundaries.
"Our cross LEP relationships are stronger now than ever before. We are keen to keep working together more closely so the whole is stronger than the sum of the parts.
"What is very difficult in building a stronger region and a stronger whole is the way that the structures that are established, such as HEIs, FE, even LEPs themselves which are set up in a competitive manner.
"Education is critical as the source of talent and so much knowledge that we require to develop our competitiveness, but educational institutions are struggling to collaborate as much as they need to as they are fighting for students, for research funding and this is making it more difficult.
"But if we can put together all the knowledge and experience within our learning institutions and make that available to businesses across the region that is a massive resource and within that we have learning institutions that are second to none.
"With LEPs we are developing solutions to many of the same problems and challenges. Where we have between us developed good solutions we should be looking to roll these out amongst the LEPs. For example we have done particularly well with the Growing Places Fund in finding a practical solution for distributing these funds to businesses in a practical and appropriate manner.
"We've sorted out the State Aid and Vested Interests issues and come up with a demand-led solution. We have gathered together £12.8m of funds which we have rolled out in grants and loans to businesses to help them grow. We have pulled together a £1.5m fund which has been allocated through universities to small businesses in tranches of £50k and under.
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"And we have pulled together lots of funding sources and aligned these to the big companies needs. As a result our funds have gone from being scarcely known about or understood to being 25 times over subscribed. And we have used this experience to help businesses with the City Deal bid.
"LEPs are very young and have not all been established in the same way.
In C&W LEP I have been appointed as a Chief Executive, but I'm also Director of Coventry City Council. Birmingham does not have a Chief Executive and Black Country has a Chief Executive whose background is from the Black Country Consortium so we are all in different positions in terms of structure, experience and so forth.
"What has been established between the Chairmen is the strategic direction and they have forged strong working relationships with each other. Whilst the LEPs are 2 1/2 years old, they have only really been operating as entities for 12 months or so. Prior to that their budget from government was £25k for the first year.
"We need to establish the LEP position in the operational hierarchy. Are they setting the strategic agenda or implementing? We need to be working together to establish strategy for a strong region. We also need to keep building the reputation of other key regional cities such as Coventry.
"People talk about LEPs and the democratic deficit as we are not elected. But I see that as a strength. How can people make decisions when organisations can be in yearly electoral cycles? We need to be thinking working and planning on longer time horizons.
"It is clear that we need to keep building our reputation as a place because attracting talent here to drive our economic growth is going to be critical for our future. So we need to ensure that we are building attractive places where people want to live and work.
"We all live and work in structures that have been built so we do need to care what these look like and how they feel to use. People are too blase about what buildings look like - too often as a planner I have seen people not caring about what their own home looks like as long as they have a 16'x14' lounge.
"But in the same breath they will object to a new home being built next door to them which looks just like their home. We need to be educating people in terms of how things look and how we can take care of our places to make them better for the next generation.
"A design approach is critical within this. In Coventry where the Council cleared away the 'medieval slums' as they saw them and wiped everything away in the '50s all the developments look the same.
They noticed that people were using one Square in Coventry more than another that was perhaps 'prettier' but they also noticed that that particular square was at the hub of a medieval street pattern and had become part of the mentality of the City in that it could be accessed by walking to it in a straight line.
Ease of access and understanding seem to be vital in making it a popular meeting place. We need to use these principles to design places where people want to live and work.
We are clearing sets of traffic lights, simplifying the navigation of the city and slowing down traffic to make it more pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists."
* Beverley Nielsen is Director Employer Engagement Birmingham City University