The Single Regeneration Budget is a UK government fund to regeneration projects. We have undertaken a mid-term evaluation of 32 projects for the Luton Dunstable Development Partnership, a partnership bringing together local and regional authorities, NGOs and the private sector. In total the projects had received funding over €17m and included social and economic initiatives, for example:

• Improving the physical security for old and disabled;
• Developing vocational training for the unemployed in minority groups;
• Improving community safety through re-orientating traffic management;
• Establishing business incubators.

The work evaluated the outputs against plan and strengthened capacity within the Development Partnership for developing new projects and in monitoring and evaluation systems.

For South West England Regional Development Agency we have provided advice to the development of regional business support strategy. The work included capacity strengthening, audit of the existing mechanisms and agencies providing support to small businesses and major surveys of the needs of local employers.

South Yorkshire is an old depressed industrial area of England which has ‘Objective 1’ status giving it preferential access to EU and national development funds. We have undertaken a major review of SMEs to develop proposals for targeted SME support under Objective 1.

We have worked with St Helens Sub-Regional Development Agency in north west England to complete a Workforce Development Plan outlining a multi-agency approach for skills development. This is based upon a review of skills providers in the sub-region contrasted with the requirements forecast by extrapolating the local economic development trends. The work has enabled the Sub-Regional Agency to provide inputs into the wider regional plan more effectively.