Summary The 2026 Green Book is more than 40 per cent shorter than its predecessor, but a more judgement-led framework...
Category: News
Defence and Regional Economies Interpreting the Investment Plan for Economic Action
Summary The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) commits £298 billion to 2029/30. It is a procurement pipeline that provides clues about...
Investment Clone or Differentiated Position – How Authorities Identify and Defend Genuine Competitive Advantage
Introduction A few years ago, researchers at Sheffield Hallam reviewed the energy strategies produced by Local Enterprise Partnerships and found...Continue reading
Don’t Walk Away Now: Industry Needs to Know That Strategies Have Purpose
A one-year briefing for economic development practitioners: what's funded, what's live to bid for, and what a change of Prime...Continue reading
Making Things Again: Can Reindustrialisation work?
Introduction In the 1980s, the UK agonised over whether it mattered if an advanced economy manufactured less, and announcements of...Continue reading
SMRs: A Silver Bullet for Post-Industrial Regional Economies?
Introduction Western economies are starting to wobble in their determination to deliver low-carbon energy systems in line with their original...Continue reading
Plan First. Consult Better.
Stakeholder engagement is rarely questioned in economic development. It appears in every strategy, every funding bid, every business case. The...Continue reading
Unmanned Systems
A once-in-a-generation shift in UK defence spending is creating substantial new procurement and investment opportunities across the unmanned vehicles sector....Continue reading
The Power of Proof: Why Economic and Social Impact Assessments are Strategic Essentials
In the competitive world of economic development, claims of "growth," "innovation," and "regeneration" are common. Every new development promises jobs,...Continue reading
Sharing rather than burying failure
I often think that if all the claimed outputs from economic development initiatives and regeneration projects across the UK were...Continue reading