The move to Local Enterprise Partnerships has not been an easy one.

It was always going to be messy, changing from a regionally based, very bureaucratic, business support body to a number of, hopefully, more flexible ones. And the media has been drip feeding ‘who’s fallen out with who’ stories since the region’s local authorities were first written to at the end of June, and invited to submit proposals for the new partnerships.

To some extent this was inevitable, given that there isn‘t a prescribed model for LEPs, and that they will take multiple forms to suit particular local circumstances. This is, after all, what localism is all about. However, it hasn’t been the coalition government’s finest hour, with the lack of clarity over the future for RDAs, and the apparent infighting between ministers, giving the impression that policy was being made on the hoof.

The dust, thankfully, is beginning to settle. Birmingham, for example, has announced that it will be forming a partnership with neighbours such as Solihull, Tamworth and Lichfield. This makes perfect sense, particularly given that Solihull’s main economic assets, such as the airport and he NEC, are already linked with the second city. And of course a number of people in Solihull, Tamworth and Lichfield, will work in Birmingham. With skills and training forming such a key element of the new partnership arrangements, there’s a ‘bottom up’ logic to this particular LEP that should stand it in good stead in the years to come.

Now the new partnerships are coming together, it’s time for the government to give some more details about how they will actually work in practice. We know that local businesses will now be on an ‘equal footing’ with local authorities, and the preference for the new bodies to be led by someone from the business community is to be welcomed.  And we know that they will be democratically accountable local people through their local councils. It’s also apparent that the LEPs will have a role in determining local issues such as planning and housing, transport and infrastructure, employment, enterprise and supporting business start-ups.

However, at the time of writing we are still awaiting the White Paper on the government’s approach to sub-national growth. What we do know is that the LEPs will not inherit all the functions previously held by the RDAs. Regional Spatial Strategies have already been abolished, inward investment looks set to be coordinated on a national level by UK Trade and Investment and business support will be transferred to the centre.

There is much still to be decided, however, with the inward investment functions of the RDAs potentially being inherited by local councils, should they make a convincing enough case.

Of course, there’s unlikely to be any central funding for the new bodies and quite how effective they can be without adequate investment is of concern. They may end up inheriting the land banks of the RDAs, when they’re formally abolished in 2012, but running costs will have to come from cash strapped local councils pooling resources. The RDAs cost over £2.3bn a year, so it’s pretty clear that there’s an economic imperative to setting up the new structures.

The LEPs, then, will have to adopt a private sector ’can do’ attitude right from the off and first in their sights should be attracting investment from the new £1bn Regional Growth Fund. Launched next year to support the economies of those regions most hit by public sector cutbacks, as well as those with the most potential for private sector growth, it’s vital that the West Midlands makes a convincing case for substantial  financial assistance.

In many ways this will be the litmus test for the new LEPs. The deadline for applications should be by the end of December this year, with a view to decisions on successful bids being announced by the end of February 2011. By then the new LEPs, spearheaded by business leaders, democratically accountable and reflecting natural economic boundaries, will be firmly established and officially recognised by the government.

Our diverse region, which has a GDP of £94 billion and a population of 5.2 million, will have a number of flexible bodies in place, then, ready to fight for investment and support. For the first time local businesses will be right at the centre of the policies and plans to steer us out of the economic downturn.

So what’s the process by which Birmingham might get an elected mayor then? Because however many times I read through the snappily titled ‘Draft Communities and Local Government Structural Reform Plan’ I still can’t quite figure out how it’s going to work and the usually helpful people at CLDG are not answering my emails.

Power, according to the Plan, will be taken away from Whitehall and put into the hands of people and communities. And the Localism Bill, the mechanism for this huge transfer of power, will pave the way for 12 cities to have elected mayors from May 2012. So, Birmingham could get a (political) mayor in less than two years time.

But what about the referendum? Well that, it appears, is to come afterwards, perhaps a year or two after the first mayors are elected. It will be a ‘confirmatory’ referendum and contrary to what I’m sure most people are expecting, the ’in favour’ threshold could very well be set much lower than 50%. The government, it appears, is keen to avoid the embarrassment of Labour‘s Regional Assembly referenda, an exercise in the transfer of power which spectacularly failed to ignite public interest.

My guess is that the current leaders in these 12 cities will be renamed mayors in 2012, and that an election won’t take place for a good few years afterwards, certainly not until after a referendum regarding the new posts. All should become clearer in November, when the groundwork for the Bill is done and ’options’ are developed for the transition to mayors. It’s starting to look more and more, though, that Birmingham will get an elected mayor regardless of whether we actually want one or not. Which is not quite the localism that many of us would have had in mind.