In our second espresso shot for November, Mike and I discuss Invest 2035 – The UK’s modern Industrial Strategy. It’s a Green Paper consultation with 35 questions on which Government is seeking responses to shape a final strategy early next year. But it has also been prominent in framing the Autumn Budget – outlined in our first November ‘shot’ – and in shaping the Local Growth Plans on which many LED and placemaking teams are working.
What are the Green Paper’s main propositions?
The eventual Industrial Strategy will seek to give business and international markets confidence to invest in the UK. It will set out a 10-year approach to address barriers to growth, the UK’s enduring productivity challenges, and place-based inequalities in economic performance. It proposes eight growth-driving sectors - Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy Industries, Creative Industries, Defence, Digital and Technologies, Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Professional and Business Services.
High potential clusters and strategic sites at scale, dynamic regional innovation systems, tailored skills and infrastructure plans can be presented in Local Growth Plans (LGPs) as local and regional contributions to the national strategy.
A new Industrial Strategy Council will advise on finalisation and delivery of the strategy.
The Green Paper status enables, among others, local and regional leadership teams to present evidence and analysis that can create a purposeful blend of top down and bottom-up dynamism.
How should we respond to and use Invest 2035?
The Green Paper is a positive opportunity to contribute evidence and thinking that can inform the final strategy. The 35 questions provide a useful checklist for formulating that contribution and also for testing your own Local Growth Plans against the emerging national framework. There is a strong case for identifying assets and capabilities in niches of the eight growth-driving national sectors, and the clusters and strategic sites that are key to delivering them.
However, both Mike and I wondered about making the case for industries and technologies outside the specific SIC sectors identified in the Green Paper where they are locally strategic and have growth and development potential. A range of land-based industries, including food and agri-tech, and the logistics industries, are two of which we both have direct experience. Indeed, the Green Paper asks explicit questions on ‘foundational sectors’ and cross-sector linkages.
The LGPs and Government’s own approach to crowding in investment – e.g. enabled by the National Wealth Fund – is going to be responsive to private investment opportunities, not all of which will necessarily be within the SIC definitions of the eight priority sectors.
In summary, use Invest2035 thinking and the consultation questions to shape your influencing efforts for the eventual National Strategy. But ensure your LGP (or equivalent in the devolved nations) is coherent, holistic and integrated with your own ambitions and opportunities and your wider goals of which the Growth Mission may only be one.
Concluding remarks
We spoke in our first November Shot of the Autumn Budget as being a big reset moment for LED and placemaking – at least in England. Part of that reset is the way of doing and thereafter delivering a UK Industrial Strategy. Both Mike and I are persuaded this is a genuine consultation, seeking to synergise top-down and bottom-up contributions. In itself, this is to be welcomed and merits a serious response and engagement as the process unfolds.
Events overseas since we recorded the shot illustrate how precarious even national strategic assumptions can turn out to be. A growth mission in a world of tariff-dominated global conflicts is a very different proposition to that which might have pertained on October 14th when Invest2035 was published. However, that is perhaps for another LEDC episode. And in extreme external volatility, better multi-tier government collaboration is surely going to be even more critical!
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