MIPIM | Govt prepares to roll out £720m fund to unleash growth
The Office for Investment is targeting late spring to kick off the the Strategic Sites Accelerator, aimed at unlocking major schemes aligned with the government’s industrial strategy.
Tim Newns, director at the Office for Investment, said the programme would look to deploy between £50m to £100m to prepare six to 10 sites for delivery up to 2030.
“The idea was, if we’re going to get the industrial strategy sectors moving, what are the current barriers, and what can we do to try and negate those?” Newns told Place North West at MIPIM. “One of the barriers was immediate access to sites.”
The government’s industrial strategy has put forward eight priority growth sectors, which the SSA is focused on advancing. These are advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, creative industries, defence, digital and technologies, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services.
The £720m SSA, announced at the Spending Review last year, could pay for roads and other infrastructure needed to make a site development-ready or fund enabling works to de-risk plots, Newns said.
The SSA, which also provides non-fiscal services like “planning triage” and advice on access to power, is aimed at getting large economy-boosting projects moving quickly in line with the government’s stated growth ambitions.
The economy grew by 1.3% in 2025, below the forecasted 1.5%, prompting criticism of Keir Starmer’s administration.
“The idea is to actually get change happening within this parliament,” Newns said.
“This isn’t to tackle really complex sites that have been sat like that for decades. This is really [for] sites that are already in demand.”
Newns refused to reveal any of the projects that the OFI is looking at but said schemes of scale that are deliverable and have political support will be prioritised.
The Hemisphere labs project in Liverpool would fit the bill as an example of a project that would be “relatively near market” and in demand, Newns confirmed when it was put to him by Place.
Conventional office space in cities where a lack of grade A supply threatens growth, as well as “big industrial sites”, are also in the running.
“We’re very much into the delivery side of [the strategy]. So hopefully this will be another tool that we can successfully deploy that will bring the accelerated growth that government is seeking,” Newns said.
This is good to hear, in the NW there needs to be a huge shift in to making it easier and cheaper to move around via public transport and better infrastructure for freight and make it cheaper to manufacture in the UK. There needs to be more solar on warehousing/retail sheds, offices, we need local turbines which can power a factory or industrial estate, capture waste energy and use it for heating. If we can get energy costs lower than other European countries, then we will attract more investment, so more jobs, more tax receipts and a better standard of living for everyone.
By GetItBuilt!