South East England Development Agency is Closing on March 31, 2012

The Government has announced that all Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), including SEEDA, will close by 31 March 2012.

Responsibility for economic development and regeneration in England is being passed onto successor bodies, including Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and central Government departments

Our objective is to ensure a professional and cost effective closure by this date.  We have pledged to work closely with our partners, contractors and stakeholders to ensure that the past and future economic benefits of key programmes and assets continue to deliver the greatest economic value for the South East and value for money for the taxpayer. 

Please click here for more details about our closure plan, transition arrangements and successor organisations.

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What we do: European investment

Attracting European funding to the region is one of SEEDA’s strategic priorities. We used European funds to invest in the projects that we know will help the region prosper. We channelled a number of European programme funding streams into areas such as the rural economy and social and biotechnology development.

These programmes were:

Non-SEEDA managed programme:

FP7 is the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This is the EU's main instrument for funding research in Europe and it will run from 2007 to 2013. It supports research to respond to Europe's needs in terms of jobs and competitiveness, and to maintain leadership in the global knowledge economy.

For further information please visit the FP7 website.

For help with FP7 in the UK, please visit the website here.

European Legacy Documents

SEEDA was been represented in Brussels since 2002, building relationships with European partners and policy-makers and ensuring that the South East’s voice has been heard. In order to ensure that partners in the South East had access to SEEDA’s accumulated expertise on European funding and partnerships, two legacy documents have been produced.

The first is a Directory of European Partnerships detailing a number of European partners established or identified through projects and the activities of the Brussels Office. It covers partners in five major sectors: aerospace and defence; automotive; environmental technologies; healthcare technologies and ICT.

The second is a Directory of European Funding opportunities and advice on how to make a successful proposal, based on SEEDA’s experience of winning funds. It is not an exhaustive list but a comprehensive selection of those funds that we believe will be of most interest to the South East.

Previous programmes SEEDA has been involved with include:

The Grow project was a €7.5million programme and ran from June 2005 to December 2007.

Further information can be found here.

BioSmile

The overall objective of the BioSmile project was to strengthen and promote the competitiveness of North West Europe in the field of biotechnology, through transnational cooperation within and between polycentric urban areas, medium-sized cities and their regions in the BioSmile region.

Further information can be found here.

Espace Manche Development Initiative (EMDI)

EMDI with a total £900,000 ERDF, aimed at fostering and strengthening Franco-British cross-Channel co-operation. The project stemmed from a strong political will within the Arc Manche partnership and the conviction that the Channel area is the relevant scale to address a full range of common strategic issues. Its follow-up cross-border CAMIS (Channel Arc Manche Integrated Strategy) project secured £1.5million ERDF.

Connected Cities

Connect Cities, which was granted £750,000 ERDF, was an inter-regional project aimed at identifying and implementing measures to provide sustainable transport and mobility to cities and regions in order to strengthen their territorial cohesion and improve the quality of life of its citizens.