Governance & Decision-Making

The LEP is led by a Board. The Board is made up of leaders from business, education and local authorities across Norfolk and Suffolk.  

Its role is to guide and advise the executive team to ensure focus on activities to help grow jobs and help businesses to flourish.

Our Board members give their time voluntarily to support the LEP.

The Board is required to approve the LEP’s significant and strategic decisions, including annual budget and business plans and the Economic Strategy for Norfolk and Suffolk. It also retains overall responsibility for risk and performance.

The LEP Board is also the decision-making body for areas covered by its sub boards and committees. Any delegation of decision making by these boards must be agreed by the LEP board.

Our Assurance Framework covers how our board is formed and governed, how our decisions are made and how our programmes are funded and managed. The Assurance Framework also provides the Government with assurance that the LEP is operating correctly.

We publish a Register of Interests for each LEP Board member. Declarations of interests are also recorded in the minutes of the monthly Board Meeting and are managed in accordance with our Standards of Conduct Policy to which all employees and Board Members adhere.

You can read the job description for the Chair of the Board here.

Private sector Board members are recruited to an agreed role description and all Board members are required to sign a non-executive Director Agreement which sets out their governance responsibilities.

The LEP has developed its own guidance for monitoring and evaluation, which provides important principles for effective evaluation and is based on central government guidance.

Our Annual Performance Review with Government ensures that we are meeting the requirements of the Assurance Framework. You can read the Chairman and Chief Executive’s Statement from the 2023/24 Annual Performance Review here.

New Anglia’s Articles of Association explain our purpose as well as our duties and responsibilities.

Our Scheme of Delegation outlines how, and by whom, decisions can be made.

Agendas and papers will be published five working days in advance of meetings and minutes published within 10 working days of meetings.

Board and committee papers published on the website will not include matters deemed confidential and those items on the board or committee papers will be marked confidential.

Papers may be considered confidential by the LEP for a number of reasons:

1 Where the LEP holds exempt information under Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972. This includes information relating to an individual, or leading to revealing the identity of an individual, relating to the financial and business affairs of a particular person or local authority holding that information, negotiations or consultations, labour relations, legal professional privilege and/ or in connection to the investigation or prosecution of a crime.

2 Where disclosure to the public is prohibited by a court.

3 Information provided by a Government department on terms which forbid the disclosure of information to the public.

The LEP also uses a prioritisation framework as the basis for appraisals. It was developed as part of the economic strategy with partners as a tool that could be used by any partner. 

We take complaints very seriously and whilst we try to provide a good service, we know that sometimes things go wrong.

For information about our complaints procedure please click here.

If you wish to make a complaint – including the option to make an anonymous complaint – simply click here. Complaints and concerns raised anonymously will be treated in confidence and every effort will be made to protect the complainant’s identity.

Employees, board members and contractors may refer to our Whistleblowing Policy.

Requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act

As a Company Limited by Guarantee we are not formally subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2005. However we recognise the importance of accountability and transparency and voluntarily adhere to this legislation. We respond to Freedom of Information requests in the same way as organisations which are formally bound by the legislation and always seek to make information available wherever possible. FOI requests should be sent to [email protected]