Agents of change have been good for business in Midlands
And with numerous further developments under way or in the pipeline, the pace of change shows no signs of letting up.
Much of this change has coincided with the winding up of the old regional development agency, and its replacement with the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
How much of the change we have seen is down to the LEP however, and how much is just a case of a city on the up?
On the surface of it, the aims of both Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the old West Midlands Regional Development Agency, and those of the current Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership seem broadly similar. The aim of both organisations has been to bring the public and private sectors together, to drive efficiency and regional growth.
And for those who remember AWM, there were undoubtedly successes with a model often based upon the direct purchase of brownfield land for redevelopment.
Despite this, the RDAs were considered by many to be both too close to Whitehall, and simultaneously, too politically unaccountable. As such, when the coalition government was elected in 2010 and promised a ‘bonfire of the quangos’, the regional development agencies were firmly in the spotlight.
In the collegiate spirit of the coalition government of 2010, the Local Enterprise Partnerships which replaced the RDAs aimed to foster much closer links between public, private and educational sectors.
And to a large extent the LEPs are far more business led than their predecessors, and far less constrained by traditional local government boundaries.
The upshot of all this has been to create wide ranging bodies which have often forced different local authorities to come together, and work across boundaries, to facilitate economic development.
How people interpret the work of the LEPs could, to a large extent, depend on political stripes.
It is worth noting, however, that Manchester, a city with diehard Labour credentials, was one of the first to embrace the opportunities the LEP framework provided. And with authorities across the Midlands working together as never before via the new mayoralty, and developments such as Paradise and Arena Central currently reshaping long neglected parts of the city, the LEP model seems to be working.
It will be interesting to see if the LEP can continue on this trajectory as major external factors such as the arrival of HS2 and the Brexit negotiations are brought to bear.