The aim is to encourage start-up businesses to these areas with the promise of superfast broadband connections, simplified planning rules and over £150m worth of tax breaks over the next four years. The zones are a crucial part of the government’s Plan for Growth, with the aim of creating more than 300,000 new jobs by 2015.

So what impact will they have? Well, the concept is not new. The very first enterprise zones were launched in 1981, offering tax breaks to firms that developed run-down areas. But in a report published this February entitled Do Enterprise Zones Work?, the Work Foundation warned they are likely to be ineffective in stimulating sustained growth in depressed areas. They conclude that enterprise zones, tax breaks and other localised incentives may stimulate short-term investment, but this typically lasts no more than three years before the area begins to revert. While it may be that the inclusion of a number of the UK’s growing cities may produce a different outcome this time, the track record for this type of intervention is not good. 

Given his limited budget, the chancellor is unlikely to be able to offer significant tax breaks within the zones. In some respects this may not be a bad thing, as experience suggests that tax breaks tend to be ineffective and costly, with relatively few new jobs created. Hopefully, the new enterprise zones may be able to remove planning constraints and offer a healthy business environment and mindful of this, the government has said that enterprise zones will be "unashamedly pro-growth". Unfortunately though, it has also said that it wants them to be "unashamedly localist"; a recipe for conflicting interests for sure.

Print perspective
What should be of most concern to printers though is the focus on attracting new start-ups. Even for those located in one of the new zones, additional competition in an already saturated sector is hardly going to be welcomed with open arms.

For others, particularly those located in areas adjacent to an enterprise zone, there are the potential difficulties presented by an uneven competitive playing field: different regimes in different areas could create the very distortions in the business environment that the government has said it is seeking to address. Protecting existing jobs is as important as creating new ones, and nothing is gained if growth in one area comes at the cost of decline elsewhere. So, rather than returning to remedies from the past, the government should be acting to sweep away barriers to business across all parts of the UK, in effect making the whole of the country an enterprise zone.

Enterprise zones are no substitute for a coherent growth strategy. Central to this should be a programme of actions to support innovation and enterprise in well-established, technologically advanced, and rapidly-evolving manufacturing industries such as printing, irrespective of company location.

Andrew Brown is public affairs adviser, BPIF