Enterprise zones didn’t work particularly well back in the 1980s. The zones were effectively expensive subsidies to persuade firms to move to particular places, and in many cases were short-lived and ineffective, often coming at the expense of neighbouring areas, as firms literally hopped over the border to benefit from temporary tax breaks.

In fact, one key lesson from the 1980s is that zones shouldn’t really focus on subsidies – rather they should be about getting key actors like local authorities, universities, businesses and communities to work together to promote and govern local development.

Critical for the success of new zones today (and there will be 21 of them in total) is the need to get investment in skills, infrastructure and the environment so as to make sure they are still good places to do business when the short-term tax relief runs out. It’s really about taking a more holistic approach to development.

So done properly, the proposed new enterprise zone for Coventry and Warwickshire could offer an opportunity for the city to support a critical mass of firms and skilled workers and to ‘incubate’ growing firms, potentially boosting the city and neighbouring area’s overall long term prospects.

The Coventry and Warwickshire LEP has proposed a zone close to the airport and the Tollbar A45 junction, and should know within a few weeks whether the bid has been successful.

The proposed zone represents an opportunity to build on a successful track-record of local development such as the Warwick Science Park, and to enable firms that are growing have a supportive environment to move into. At the moment there is a space constraint in the city for such firms.

The zone offers the chance for better links with the planned development of Jaguar Land Rover’s Whitley site. It could also offer inward investors from outside Coventry an attractive place in which to locate, getting not just five year’s worth of business rates relief but also support from local universities, councils and other agencies. Overall the aim is to create some 10,000 jobs in the zone and confirm another 4,000.

But, as ever, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Without careful planning, the zone will add to congestion around an existing transport bottleneck, the notorious Tollbar End Roundabaout, which is already hugely congested. So key to success of the zone will be accelerating infrastructure improvements to unlock the economic potential of the site, while at the same time protecting local villages from traffic.

And the zone will eat up some green belt (although some of this includes an old sewage works and a tank test track). This will require sensitive development so as not to degrade the environment, and the involvement of local communities. Balancing the latter with the ‘fast track’ planning envisaged for such zones will be a challenge for the LEP but will be crucial to make sure that the zone benefits the wider community.

This proposed zone for Coventry and Warwickshire is in stark contrast to that already agreed for Birmingham and Solihull, where the zone is focused squarely on Birmingham city centre.

This is unusual as enterprise zones aren’t typically situated in city centres, especially not ones with the pulling power of Birmingham, which has just landed a £100 million investment from John Lewis. Put another way, Birmingham city centre can grow without a zone, so why have it there when other places could benefit from such a zone?