Advantage West Midlands scrapped: Where's the money?

It was set up with flourishes and fanfares when the New Labour Government really was "new". Its aim was to deliver home-grown strategies for economic regeneration.


The site where the BBC's Pebble Mill studios once stood

It survived from 1999 until the Coalition Government scrapped it earlier this year. In its heyday, Advantage West Midlands (AWM) had an annual budget of £200m and employed 300 people.

During that time the regional development agency acquired, at taxpayers' expense, an impressive portfolio of property right across the Midlands, valued at many millions of pounds. All of it was strategically chosen for its regenerative potential.

For example, the site of the one-time BBC Pebble Mill studios and the former MG Rover works at Longbridge were among AWM's investments intended to pave the way towards a series of "technology corridors" radiating out of Birmingham, in this case, towards Bromsgrove.

What, we wondered, happened to all these assets when AWM was wound up?

Ownership of much of it has now left the region and gone to Whitehall - it was either sold or handed over to the Homes and Community Agency.

The result is most of the land stands idle.

Where regeneration is taking place it is usually in the form or hotels and housing rather than pioneering new technologies or wealth-creating manufacturing businesses.

In one case, land was sold back to a local authority so the taxpayer paid twice.

A spokesman for the Business Innovation and Skills Department told us: "Regional development agencies were locally-led and responsible for disposing of their own assets."

I had dealings with AWM, let's just say I was less than impressed!