Comment: Will Devo make LLR better at growing businesses?

There is a lot of discussion about devolution, boundaries, structures and who sits where. All important.

But from a business perspective, I am interested in a much simpler question:

Will it make Leicester and Leicestershire better at growing businesses?

Because that is where the opportunity really lies.

Leicestershire currently sits outside Combined Authorities. By the County Council leader’s own acknowledgement, it is missing out on funding streams and influence as a consequence.

Our council leaders are now collectively supporting the creation of a Mayoral Strategic Authority - and that creates an opportunity to change the conversation.

But additional funding alone won’t transform our economy. Capability will.

I work with SMEs and their leadership teams every week. What I see isn’t simply a shortage of technical skills. I see businesses with great products, talented people and huge ambition that are being held back by gaps in leadership and commercial capability.

How do we develop managers into leaders? How do we teach people to understand margin, cash, customers and productivity – not just turnover?

How do we build businesses that can sell strategically, manage performance, embrace technology and AI, develop their people and actually execute a strategy?

Those are skills too.

There are already positive steps. Leicester’s Pathways to Devolution pilot brings around £1.95m of additional Adult Skills Fund money under greater local management, and its proposed priorities specifically recognise management skills that improve small-business productivity.

But the funding remains subject to national rules, and places are prioritised for city residents, with county residents accessing remaining places.

That highlights the opportunity that Devolution could give us.

Businesses don’t operate according to council boundaries. Neither should our ambition.

We need City and County leadership to think commercially about the whole economic ecosystem: what businesses do we want to grow here, what capabilities will they need, where are the gaps today, and what investment will genuinely move the dial?

And importantly, business needs to be in the room when those decisions are made.

I don’t want Devolution simply to give us another layer of governance or another pot of money to distribute.

I want it to give Leicester and Leicestershire the ability to invest differently - in the technical, leadership, management and commercial capabilities that enable our businesses and our people to compete, grow and sustain our regional economy.

Devolution gives us an opportunity). What matters now is what we choose to do with it.