The lack of women on the board of the local enterprise partnership has caused controversy, writes Anna Blackaby.

It is “extremely regrettable” that board meetings of the new body set up to boost private sector jobs in the area will be an all-male affair, according to its new chairman John Lewis managing director Andy Street

After the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) interim chairman Bridget Blow bows out to make way for Mr Street in May, a team of high-profile businessmen including Nick Bunker, UK president of Kraft Foods and Cadbury and Stephen Hollis, Midland chairman of KPMG, will share responsibility with seven of the nine local authorities in the LEP area for shaping economic growth (which are also all led by men apart from Redditch, which has duel membership with the Worcestershire LEP and is represented by the leader of Bromsgrove District Council).

But the LEP denies any kind of conspiracy – there just weren’t enough women from the private sector putting themselves forward for the role of board member, it maintains.

Mr Street said: “Am I happy with the composition of the board in every respect other than the gender balance? Yes.

“We’ve got a good balance in terms of geography, sectors and of small and large organisations. But it is extremely regrettable that there are not more women on the board.”

According to the LEP, just 10 per cent of the 80 applications they received were from women – and many of those did not fit the criteria as they came from a public rather than private sector background.

And the LEP points out that the new board appointments will only be for a year – after which Mr Street expressed hope that more women would come forward to balance the numbers.

But that has not convinced critics who have dismissed the LEP’s defence that there were simply not enough women applying for the high-profile roles.

Labour MP for Edgbaston Gisela Stuart pointed to the external board of Birmingham Business School, which she is a member of.

“We have probably almost half women on there including people like Angela Maxwell from Acuwomen.

“This notion that the West Midlands does not have a sufficient number of women with practical business experience is not correct.

“To have a local enterprise board for the West Midlands with no women is just from the age of the dinosaurs.”

Ms Stuart accused the LEP of not being proactive enough in soliciting applications from women.