1. The influence of transnational
projects on a Draft Funding
Strategy under the new English EU
funding system - 2014-2020
Mainstreaming Lessons Learnt
Patrick Willcocks
Independent Consultant

2. EU Funds in England
My talk to day will be about
• The new approach to delivering EU funds in
England for 2014-2020
• The learning lessons we have taken from the
Cross Innovation project plus others (inc
District Plus)
• Steve’s and my role in developing the EU
funding strategy for Greater Birmingham

3. EU Funds in England
• New Government in 2010
• We have gone from 9 Regional Development
Agencies (RDAs) in England to
• 39 Local Enterprise Partnership
• RDA’s were business influenced but were part of
Government and had a wider partnership
• LEPs are lead by Business with Local Authority
and University involvement
• Distrust of regionalism – favour a bottom up
approach

4. EU Funds in England
• UK Government propose – 1 English national
ERDF (FEDER) programme and 1 ESF (FSE)
programme
• Propose devolution down to the 39 LEPs but
not final decision making
• 95% of funds passed down to LEPs
• UK Government doesn’t like the concept on
Integrated Territorial Investments so doesn’t
want full devolution

5. EU Funds in England

6. EU Funds in England
• West Midlands 2007-2014
– ERDF programme
• Now there are 6 LEPs in the
West Midlands
• We have written the Draft
Plan for Greater Birmingham
and Solihull www.urbanpivot.com
• €255m ERDF and ESF
• Part Transition area and Part
More Developed

7. EU Funds in Greater Birmingham
6 priorities
• Innovation
• SME Competitiveness
• Low Carbon Communities
• Unemployment
• Social Inclusion/Poverty
• Skills/Life Long Learning
• Drafted by a team of
thematic experts

8. Cross Innovation - the Project
• Lead by Birmingham City University
• Interreg IVC project
• Role of the digital, and creative sectors in driving
innovation
• 11 cities...Stockholm, Birmingham, Amsterdam
and Berlin .........
• Looked at it through four windows;
•
•
•
•
Spaces
Finance
Culture
Brokerage

9. My role - linking in
• Contracted to write the Local Implementation
Plan
• All 11 cities need to do one
• Put into the project as a way of trying to
ensure policy and project transfer
• Supported by Local Implementation Groups
• Responding to the need to ensure relevance
and tie in of transnational projects to local
actions

10. Local Implementation Plan (LIP)
• Workshop to test ideas in June 2013
• Draft produced July 2013
• Contents
• What is best practice from the partner cities drawn from across Europe
• What are the gaps in Birmingham in cross innovation policy and
....implementation
• What are the opportunities to influence programmes and policies to
.....support further cross innovation

11. Reflections on the Role of the LIPs
• Birmingham's one is seeking to influence
policy makers – as BCU doesn’t deliver.
• Others such as Berlin's undertaken by the
Berlin Senate assume they have the power
and resource and look at what they need to
do.
• Interestingly so far ours is the only one that is
explicitly trying to influence the new EU
funding programmes.

12. Birmingham's LIP
Findings
• There is no overall Innovation Strategy and so
without that a focus on cross innovation will not
necessarily succeed.
• Due to closure of the Regional Development
Agency and Birmingham City Council not
addressed it before.
• Issue of coherence and leadership
• Found that there were many good ideas but not
co-ordinated
• Suggested a number of particular project ideas
to pursue ...but the role of serendipity

13. The Big Opportunity
• BCU was successful in winning a tender to write
the European Funding Strategy for the Greater
Birmingham Local Enterprise Partnership
• Therefore included some of the ideas coming out
of the project into the first draft.
• There were other projects and programmes that
influenced our work –
• Making Knowledge Work Interreg IVC
• District Plus (through Henriette’s work)
• Climate Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC)

14. Some of the Ideas
• The role of the creative industries in stimulating
innovation across the economy
• Collaborative Innovation – getting out of silos
• The widening of the definition of knowledge
transfer partnerships
• Similarly wider Innovation vouchers
• Challenge based approaches to innovation
• Pioneers in to Practice the role of mentoring
• Co-working and an eco system approach to
innovation

15. Where we are at now
• The LEP was starting to address the innovation
gap
• With our recommendations we have got them to
commit to producing an over arching strategic
innovation framework
• Based on an Smart Specialisation approach
• Need to combine this with the eco system
approach
• So our strategy directly influenced by Cross
Innovation project......plus others

16. How come this has worked (so far)
• The drafting group had real experience of both
transnational projects and local delivery
• Henriette Lyttle Breukellaar – ex RDA and District
Plus
• Steve Harding Ex Birmingham City Council (BCC)
Economic Devt and ECCE/Cross Innovation
transnational projects
• Jon Bloomfield – Ex BCC and ex RDA plus Climate
KIC
• Patrick Willcocks – Ex BCC / numerous
transnational projects/ ERDF and ESF locally

17. How come this has worked (so far)
• Previous RDA led regional programme – highly
competent but not open to ideas outside of UK
• So perhaps the more localised EU funding has
helped the transfer of ideas
• In consultations broad support for the activities
• Challenges –
– to ensure through Smart Specialisation work that the
open approach to innovation is maintained
– And to ensure projects come forward with the ideas
contained within the draft Strategy.
• In Cross Innovate – want to do ‘peer review’ of
LIPs to see if we can push them further

18. Thank you
ANY QUESTIONS
Patrick Willcocks
patrick1willcocks@gmail.com
www.urbanpivot.com
@globalbirminghm