THE Tees Valley Unlimited Local Enterprise Partnership (Lep) has a pretty good track record for attracting investment to our region.

This week’s feature interview is with Stephen Catchpole, TVU’s managing director, who offers his views on everything from the recent Lord Adonis Review into the North-East economy to his relationship with his counterparts in the North-East Lep, which represents Northumberland, Tyneside, Wearside and County Durham.

He denies TVU has been reluctant to deal with its northern counterpart and insists the two bodies plan to meet regularly to work on matters of common interest such as regional railways or Hitachi’s new train factory in Newton Aycliffe. Time will tell if this proves to be the case.

Meanwhile, even Vince Cable, who recently questioned Leps’ accountability to the public and their capacity to handle multi-billion pound pots of taxpayers’ cash, has admitted to being a fan of TVU.

I share the Business Secretary’s concern that the Leps set up by the Coalition to replace regional development agencies are illequipped to handle multi-billion pounds spending pots proposed by Lord Heseltine in his plan to shift budget responsibility from Whitehall mandarins to local decision makers. But the consistent message from ministers and Opposition MPs is that, as far as Leps go, TVU is among the most effective.

It had significant success in leveraging cash pledges in the early rounds of the Regional Growth Fund, and an innovative plan to create an enterprise zone spread over multiple Tees Valley sites, instead of concentrating on a single location, as originally envisaged was hailed as brave and clever by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

Whereas other parts of the country have struggled to attract occupants to their enterprise zones, the Tees Valley has scored successes such as Air Products, which is building two revolutionary wasteto- energy plants in the area.

TVU is about to sign a deal with Finance Wales to manage a £10m fund providing short-term finance to support Tees Valley’s small firms in winning contracts with large clients. The scheme is backed by the Regional Growth Fund and has a target of creating 1,440 jobs. The Government is keeping a close eye on the scheme which could become the template for a national programme.

Another example of TVU making good use of its limited resources.

HAS your company had problems securing a bank loan? I ask because Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester has added his two-penn’orth to the debate about banks’ failure to back small businesses.

Mr Hester, a former head boy at Easingwold School, in North Yorkshire, claimed RBS had a £20bn cash pot it was desperate to lend out, but companies were not prepared to borrow as they lacked faith in the economic recovery. Mr Hester said he could not force companies to borrow.

His comments do not match what I hear from small firms across our region who claim they cannot get access to cash at affordable rates.

Who is correct? Get in touch and tell us about your experiences – both good and bad – of trying to get funding from your bank manager.