The Government has named four more of its proposed 21 Enteprise Zones in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Sheffield this week but with a warning from Nick Maltby, partner at Bircham Dyson Bell LLP not to make the mistakes of the 1980's.

"The Enterprize Zones will benefit from simplified planning rules, super-fast broadband and tax breaks for businesses, but I'm not wholly convinced that if we create them, they won't impact adversely on neighbouring areas," said Nick Maltby.

"The Government must learn the lessons of the 1980's when urban areas were granted freedom from normal planning controls and given tax relief but cost millions and only generated an extra 13,000 jobs in reality. With the exception of the London Docklands, they were not a raging success.

"The new zones are being established in places with potential to grow rather than simply in a deprived or declining area as they were in the 1980's and as they are based on local enterprise partnership (LEP) areas, the Government hopes that displacement will be minimised. However, it's hard to see how this will not in fact increase the deplacement factor from surrounding areas especially ones that are deprived.

"So much is undefined at present and of course, because there are 30 proposed LEP's and only 21 proposed Enterprise Zones, it remains to be seen which areas will lose out, but location, how they will affect other businesses and the impact on green belt land are just some of the concerns I have. While it would be good to see the first zones up and running as soon as possible to kick start the growth that the country badly needs, the new zones will need to be monitored closely to ensure that they are not having an adverse impact".

Four vanguard areas for Enterprise Zones were identified at the time of the Budget- Liverpool (Liverpool Waters), London (Royal Docks), Manchester (Manchester Airport) and Nottingham (Boots campus). The latest four sites to be named are Birmingham and Solihull (Birmingham City Centre), Bristol (Temple Quarter Zone), Leeds (Lower Aire Valley) and Sheffield (along M1). The Government expects to select six further zones from 30 second wave applications by the end of the summer.

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