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With so much attention on the new 拢5.5bn of capital funding and the PFI reforms announced last week in chancellor George Osborne鈥檚 Autumn Statement, you may have missed, or - to be frank - not given two hoots about, the reforms to Local Enterprise Partnerships.

But you just might have missed something important. Because LEPs, designed to promote job growth and strong local economies, and which have been growing in status over the past year, were effectively turbo-charged by Osborne. He not only gave them financial security, a range of new powers and access to cheap borrowing to fund infrastructure, but he also gave a whole-hearted endorsement to Lord Heseltine鈥檚 report on local growth and its central recommendation: a single funding pot for local services administered by LEPs.

This - potentially - is one of the biggest shifts in local power in a generation, opening up the possibility of anything up to 拢50bn in government funding being doled out directly to LEPs to administer. As LEPs are private sector-led bodies explicitly set up with a mission to promote economic growth, this could also be a shift that the construction industry needs to be on top of. However, the extent of the shake-up will not be determined until next year, meaning it remains unclear exactly how significant LEPs will be to future pipelines of work.

Certainly LEPs have come a long way. When the coalition axed Labour鈥檚 Regional Development Agencies in June 2010, along with more than 拢2bn of annual funding that went with them, it was fair to say their successors, the supposedly 鈥渓ocalist鈥� LEPs, were treated with scepticism. Their powers were unclear and they were being expected to operate initially with no specific budget.

Laura Shoaf, head of strategic planning and implementation at one of them, the Black Country Consortium, says: 鈥淥ur chair used to joke, when he was presenting to businesses about the LEP, that the first thing to know about us was that we had no money and no power.鈥� It didn鈥檛 exactly send the bodies to the top of the construction industry鈥檚 priority list. Things are very different now, says Shoaf: 鈥淟ast week鈥檚 announcement was undoubtedly the most significant set of policy reforms since LEPs were established.鈥�

Our chair used to joke that we had no money and no power. last week鈥檚 announcement was the most significant set of reforms since leps were established

Laura Shoaf, Black Country Consortium

There are now 39 LEPs, with one - or, in some cases, two - covering every acre of ground in England, with their extent supposedly determined by the geography of local economies, rather than where council boundaries happen to be. This means that many cover multiple council areas or parts of councils. Unlike the RDAs they replaced, they have no statutory basis, no land holdings and a central government mandate to stay lean, mean and dedicatedly out of the delivery of projects and services. But despite this, their role in prioritising and directing central government funding in local areas has been growing rapidly.

Just over a year ago, they were given responsibility for handing out the government鈥檚 Growing Places Fund - 拢500m of cash allocated for stalled development sites. Neil McLean, property lawyer at DLA Piper, and chair of the Leeds LEP, says: 鈥淲e鈥檝e got 拢36m of cash to invest in sites, so it鈥檚 absolutely key that developers engage with us.鈥� That鈥檚 just one city.

And if the Autumn Statement is to be believed, the Growing Places Fund will be just the start. LEPs have, in recent months, had their core funding confirmed, been minutely involved in the formation of 鈥渃ity deals鈥� - devolved packages of powers for individual big cities - and been told they will have control over the revenues generated by new business rates levied in England鈥檚 24 Enterprise Zones. Labour has also backed them, meaning their existence is not threatened by a future change of government.

But most vitally, Osborne said last week that LEPs will now be explicitly charged with creating a growth strategy for the areas they represent. This will then be used as a basis to bid for money from a single funding pot - starting from April 2015 - which will include cash currently spent by central government departments and quangos on housing, transport, skills and employment schemes.

David Marlow, MD of consultancy Third Life Economics, and a former RDA chief executive, says: 鈥淚t has been a huge step forward. People were uncertain as to how important they were, but the decisions this autumn appear to have ended that uncertainty.鈥�

This growing influence means that the construction sector needs to engage now, in order to influence LEPs鈥� strategic priorities as they develop their growth plans, and to be in the right place to bid for cash to help specific schemes. Simon Nathan, head of policy at the UK Contractors Group, says: 鈥淥n a local level the understanding of the importance of construction to economic growth is patchy. It鈥檚 important that message gets through, so we need a real push to get involved now.鈥�

One person who has got involved is Simon Eastwood, MD at Carillion Developments, and a board member of the Black Country LEP. He says membership has had multiple benefits. 鈥淚 led a piece of research on removing the barriers to the planning system across the four authorities [which make up the Black Country Consortium] and we鈥檝e now gone from a position where planning decisions were never delivered within the statutory period to one where most decisions are now made in 30 days.

鈥淎nd I鈥檝e also been able to bang the drum pretty hard for the importance of construction in the local economy.鈥�

Lord Heseltine鈥檚 report, on which Osborne鈥檚 statement was based, recommended that more than 拢12bn in government funding per year - 拢49bn in total - be diverted to the single pot to be spent by LEPs. To give an idea of the scale under his plan, this would include all 拢4.5bn of this parliament鈥檚 social housing spend, 拢2.5bn of flood defences spend, 拢1.7bn for local transport projects, 拢338m for waste PFI schemes - to name just a few.

Osborne declined to say how much he thought should go into the pot, saying it would be determined by a mini spending review to be conducted in the first half of next year. Experts say the scene is therefore set for a Whitehall scrap over the extent of this devolution of funding, with spending departments looking to keep control of their cash. Marlow says: 鈥淢ost departments are likely to be very relaxed about the money from other departments going into the single pots, but much less so about their own.鈥�

As well as the challenge of pushing this through, Osborne will also have to work out how LEPs remain nimble with low overheads (each has been promised just 拢250,000 to pay for running costs), yet start administering potentially huge sums of taxpayer cash - all of which has to be properly audited and accounted for. At the moment many LEPs are not formally constituted in any way - rather they are loose associations of volunteers - and only a tiny number of those that are companies are set up as formal 鈥渁ccountable bodies鈥� allowed to spend government cash.

However, Leeds LEP鈥檚 McLean says he thinks these problems can be side-stepped. 鈥淲e have Leeds council as our formal accounting body, but we have an agreement that the funding is entirely controlled by the LEP board. The technicality of whose bank account the money sits in is an irrelevance.鈥�

Contractors also need to be aware LEPs aren鈥檛 likely to lead to a quick solution to their need for work - the single pot will only become available from April 2015. However, while they鈥檙e not - yet - as powerful as the RDAs once were, these coalition creations can no longer be ignored by the industry.