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About

Alliance for Enterprise is a ground breaking six-year programme designed to harness existing growth within the deprived areas of the Districts of Ashfield, Bolsover and Mansfield.

The programme is based on two key concepts. Firstly, the delivery of neighbourhood level outreach support to potential and existing businesses, and to connect local people to new employment. Secondly, the creation of a longer term benefit through developing a new culture of local enterprise. This would be delivered through 3 main areas of activity:

• Promoting an Entrepreneurial Ethos
• Providing Access to Employment for Local People
• Enhancing the Performance of Local Businesses

Promoting an Entrepreneurial Ethos is focussed on making sure that young people in particular are given the awareness and skills necessary to allow them to consider starting their own business or to be more effective employees.

Providing Access to Employment for local people will assist people living in the most deprived areas, including the large number of economically inactive, to gain access to employment opportunities created by “home grown” enterprises or inward investment.

Enhancing the performance of local business is focussed on neighbourhood based outreach business support and reducing the currently high failure rate of businesses. This will help to overcome the difficulties of small businesses engaging with business support providers.

For more information on the delivery method and projects for these three work streams, please see Initiatives and Projects.

Background

An invitation was made by Government through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) in July 2005 for Councils receiving Neighbourhood Renewal Funds to bid for a share of £300 million of funding over 3 annual bidding rounds. As both Ashfield, Mansfield and Bolsover were eligible to apply, and due to the obvious geographic and economic synergies between the three areas, a collaborative bid was submitted.

The funding is delivered through the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI), which was announced in the Budget 2005. LEGI is a neighbourhood renewal programme that aims to increase entrepreneurial activity in the local population; support the growth and reduce the failure rate of locally-owned businesses; and attract appropriate inward investment and franchising - making use of local labour resources.

A steering group was formed to guide the development of a bid and consisted of officers from:

• Ashfield, Mansfield and Bolsover District Councils
• Nottinghamshire County Council
• Derbyshire County Council
• Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM)
• The Alliance SSP (representing East Midlands Development Agency)
• Ashfield, Mansfield and Bolsover Local Strategic Partnerships
• Other key stakeholders.

Detailed research and consultation interviews were carried out with the major partners working in the three Districts, including local business. This included two very well attended consultation workshop events in preparation for the final submission in December 2005.

Following the submission of the final bid, the three District Councils made presentations at GOEM on 13th January 2005 to representatives of GOEM, emda and local business. GOEM then ranked the three East Midlands bids (including Nottingham, Derby and Leicester three cities bid and Lincoln) for submission to ODPM. The Alliance for Enterprise bid was ranked top in the East Midlands and was put on a shortlist for review by a national panel in February 2006. Following this it was announced in March 2006 that the scheme was successful in bidding for £3.8million over the first three years.

For more information please visit www.allianceforenterprise.org