Ministers today announced 56 bids for Local Enterprise Partnership status were submitted by the 6 September deadline.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles said many of the LEP proposals were ‘radical’ in approach and that his CLG team, and other ministers, had been ‘impressed’ by them.

‘These 56 LEP proposals are just the beginning of a radical way of delivering prosperity and rebalancing the economy,’ he said.

LEPs are the brainchild of coalition ministers and will replace England’s nine Regional Development Agencies from 2012.

Made up of partnerships between councils and businesses, the sub-regional bodies will be charged with kick-starting moribund local economies through the promotion of economic growth strategies, including transport, skills and business development programmes.

Ministers are expected to provide more details of how LEPs will be established, and how they will operate, in a white paper this winter.

The full list of LEP bids is as follows:

1. Bexley, Dartford, and Gravesham
2. Birmingham and Solihull with East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth
3. Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole
4. Brighton and Hove, Croydon, the Gatwick Diamond and West Sussex Coast to Capital
5. Cheshire and Warrington
6. County Durham
7. Coventry and Warwickshire
8. Cumbria
9. Devon, Plymouth and Torbay
10. East Anglia (Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and North Essex)
11. East Sussex
12. Empowering Enterprise - Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
13. Enterprise M3 - Covers parts of Hampshire and Surrey including Andover, Basingstoke, Aldershot, Farnborough, Fleet, Hook and Camberley
14. Fylde Coast, Lancashire
15. Gatwick Diamond
16. Gloucester, Swindon and Wiltshire
17. Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough
18. Greater Lincolnshire
19. Greater Manchester
20. Hampshire
21. Heart of the South West
22. Hertfordshire
23. Hull, East Riding & Scarborough
24. Humber
25. Kent and Medway
26. Kent-Essex
27. Lancashire
28. Leeds City Region
29. Leicester and Leicestershire
30. Liverpool City Region
31. Newcastle Gateshead
32. Norfolk
33. North East
34. Northamptonshire
35. Northumberland and North Tyneside
36. Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Derbyshire,
37. Oxfordshire City Region
38. Pennine Lancashire
39. Sheffield City Region
40. Solent
41. South East Midlands
42. South Somerset and East Devon
43. South Tyneside and Sunderland
44. Stoke-on -Trent and Staffordshire
45. Surrey Connects
46. Tees Valley
47. Thames Valley Berkshire
48. Thames Valley Buckinghamshire
49. The Black Country
50. The Marches Enterprise Partnership - Shropshire and Herefordshire
51. The Peel Group - Atlantic Gateway - Liverpool and Manchester
52. Visitor Economy Southern England
53. West Midlands
54. West of England
55. Worcestershire
56. York and North Yorkshire