Enabling growth across the UK 2025

HM Government should:

• Ensure that the new Strategic Investment Opportunities Unit is built on a real and close partnership with the private sector, including, where appropriate, with the use of secondees and other industry expertise.
• Ensure it includes devolved leaders and agencies in its planning for trade promotion, including foreign delegations and pitches for investment. The Mayoral Council for England and Council of the Nations and Regions should be key partners in a building a ‘TeamUK’ approach to attracting investment.
• Link the international trade strategies of the Department for Business & Trade (DBT) to both the national Industrial Strategy and Local Growth Plans in key conurbations and priorities to ensure a consistent focus.
• Build on the recommendations of the Harrington Review to give clear points of contact within DBT for those combined and local authorities developing their own strategies for overseas promotion of their areas.
• Continue the location of new government facilities in key hubs outside of London. Decisions on location should pay due attention to regional economic strategies, ensuring where possible that public sector investment can generate a wider private sector growth and encourage thriving clusters.

Devolved leaders should:

• Ensure their region has a single ‘front door’ for business services and support. This should include signposting to both regional or national initiatives and funding, as well as those available from the UK government or other organisations such as the British Business Bank.
• Continue to work with the UK government to improve transport connectivity in their area, allowing regional and national hubs to thrive in partnership.
• Continue to partner with the government to improve digital infrastructure, in particular the rollout of 5G.

HM Government should:

• Continue its plans to roll out the metro mayor and combined authority model to all English regions that want it, while simultaneously devolving greater powers for existing mayoral combined and local authorities.
• Deliver its long-term goal of a consistent devolution settlement across all English regions and sensible alignment with the UK nations, with clarity for business on the powers devolved leaders have.
• Actively explore how metro mayors can take strategic responsibility for major infrastructure projects to overcome obstacles to prompt delivery such as delays in the planning system and localised supply chains.
• Continue the roll out of single financial settlements for combined authorities, moving away from multiple funding pots and competitive bidding processes.
• Ensure the Mayoral Council for England and the Council of the Regions and Nations effectively support the interactions between mayors and other devolved leaders and Westminster and Whitehall.
• Strengthen the corporate memory of regional, devolved and local government by creating a new Leadership Academy, bringing in the best expertise from leaders around the world, and from business to support political leaders and their staff in personal and policy development with a clear focus on how policymakers can work with industry to drive growth.

Devolved leaders should:

• Ensure that business is central to the development of their Local Growth Plans and Spatial Frameworks. Plans should include clear metrics and identify specific ways in which businesses from key industries, including financial and related professional services, can contribute to the area’s vision for economic growth in the region.
• Develop an industry-specific strategy for financial and related professional services, reflecting the industry’s role as an engine for growth in the wider economy and the key position awarded to the industry in the Modern Industrial Strategy. This should include a plan for helping link capital with projects in the area currently seeking investment.
• Ensure that every sector of the economy, especially in services, is fully represented in both business engagement forums and their work in promoting the area overseas.

HM Government should:

• Ensure that Skills England works closely with business when designing the new Growth and Skills Levy, in particular when considering what qualifications and training will qualify for levy support.
• Expand clear and transparent routes for employers to be involved in curriculum and qualification design and delivery. Where possible Skills England and metro mayors should seek to identify and implement pilot projects where innovative and deeper partnerships between education providers and industry can be tested and scaled.
• Ensure national policies on skills and mobility provide regional clusters with the skills they need to grow and that Skills England and the Migration Advisory Committee take account of Local Growth plans when forming and implementing policy.

Devolved leaders should:

• Bring together the widest possible employer network to contribute to their skills strategies and use their convening power to reflect this in the Local Skills Improvement Plan. This will ensure that these plans reflect the needs of the regional economy.
• Ensure that plans for mapping and addressing skills needs align closely with the wider vision for economic growth, including creating capacity for training and re-skilling in growth sectors.
• Use their convening power to connect schools, colleges and universities to engage employers in all areas of the education process, for instance in areas such as curriculum and course design—particularly when they have clusters in niche areas of industry such as specific forms of FinTech or LawTech.

HM Government should:

• • Explore the possibility of allowing developers to re-negotiate Section 106 Agreements that are less than five years old as being one route to allowing viable sites that are currently unviable due to market changes to be unlocked with a more flexible approach.
• The government should set new guidance to prevent discouraging practices such as additional levies and ensure that all of the UK has a predictable and helpful planning regime which encourages sustainable development.
• Explore allowing mayors to designate zones with a much greater presumption of planning approval. The UK’s current planning regime of application and appeal is an international outlier.
• Mandate that responses from statutory consultees will only be considered if provided within a strict deadline. We also propose that if no response is received from a statutory consultee within the stated period, it will be presumed that they assent to the proposal.

Devolved leaders should:

• Adopt a positive attitude to development as essential to delivering economic growth, housing and funding for further local infrastructure.