(From the Surrey County Council website - click here for more)
What is the Local Economic Assessment (LEA)?
The LEA is a narrative on the broad range of factors - economic, social and environmental - that affect sustainable growth. It identifies challenges and opportunities for the Surrey economy. In doing this, the LEA provides an understanding of the economic conditions in Surrey, and how they affect its residents, businesses and communities. With a changing economic and political climate this is important, so that when decisions need to be made there is data readily available to inform and support them.
The assessment is not simply a data gathering exercise. It aims to tell a shared ‘story of place’ through the combination of data and evidence across a range of themes. It supports Surrey County Council in playing a more significant role in promoting economic development, underpins the county council's priority to maintain economic success, and helps ensure that the county council is better able to respond to future economic challenges.
The Surrey LEA was undertaken by Surrey Economic Partnership Ltd in collaboration with Surrey County Council and was completed in December 2010.
What information does the LEA contain?
The report covers six broad strategic themes:
- economic performance
- business and enterprise
- labour market (including worklessness)
- transport and infrastructure
- people and communities
- sustainable economic growth.
A comprehensive range of local, regional, national and international data underpins the LEA. Woven throughout the report are the linkages between skills, rural issues, economic growth and wider social and environmental issues. The LEA has been tested and validated through consultation with partners from the 12 local authorities (county, district and borough), as well as the wider economic development stakeholder community and Surrey businesses. In this way, Surrey’s LEA has drawn in a wealth of qualitative information to add strength, depth and life to the statistical analysis.
The Surrey LEA (available to download in three parts via the link above) is accompanied by an Executive Summary and Technical Annex. The Executive Summary highlights the key findings of the Surrey LEA and the Technical Annex the underlying evidence used to inform the report. More detailed information on worklessness is available in the Worklessness Assessment, a complementary report on issues related to unemployment in Surrey.
