A one-year briefing for economic development practitioners: what's funded, what's live to bid for, and what a change of Prime Minister could mean
When the Department for Business and Trade published the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy on 23 June 2025, it promised a ten-year, whole-of-government plan to lift investment and growth. A year on, with all eight IS-8 sector plans published and three quarterly delivery updates in the public domain, this briefing sets out what's actually funded and operational, sector by sector, and what practitioners advising on funding bids, inward investment and local growth plans need to track next.
We also note that a 10-year strategy is all about being the framework on which investment decisions are made irrespective of the occupant of Downing Street on any given day.
At a glance
- All eight IS-8 sector plans are published; delivery is tracked through three quarterly updates, most recently Jan–Mar 2026 (published 9 April 2026), and a new business-facing Prospectus (9 June 2026).
- BICS is legislated and funded: up to 25% off electricity bills for over 10,000 manufacturers from April 2027.
- Five Defence Growth Deals and five AI Growth Zones are now confirmed across the UK, see below for where.
- The hardest test, doubled investment, GVA growth, a top-three global ranking, remains decade-long and unanswerable from one year of data.
- Keir Starmer's resignation on 22 June 2026 puts the strategy's ten-year premise to its first real test.
The architecture, in brief
The IS-8 covers Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy Industries, Creative Industries, Defence, Digital and Technologies, Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Professional and Business Services, each with its own Sector Plan setting out the frontier industries within it. Delivery is tracked through quarterly updates and sector-specific reports such as Digital and Technologies' Year One Update and AI Adoption Plan, giving practitioners a genuine evidence base to work from rather than a single launch announcement.
The headline ambition, and the more answerable question
The growth case rests on decade-long targets: Advanced Manufacturing investment doubling from £21 billion to £39 billion by 2035; Creative Industries roughly doubling to £31–35 billion, generating an estimated £18 billion GVA and 160,000 jobs; and a UK top-three global ranking for investability across the IS-8. None of this is answerable at the one-year mark. What is answerable is whether the funding and institutional plumbing needed to reach it is actually in place, and on that narrower question there is a good deal to report.
Energy costs: the big cross-cutting lever
The British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS), confirmed and expanded at Budget 2026, will cut electricity bills by up to 25% for over 10,000 manufacturers from April 2027, worth an estimated £35–£40 per megawatt-hour and up to £600 million a year, alongside an existing 90% network-charge discount for around 500 of the most energy-intensive firms in steel, cement, glass and chemicals. For any business case built on industrial energy costs, this is now a funded, legislated mechanism rather than an aspiration, even though the main benefit is still around eighteen months away. The financing architecture is also in place: the National Wealth Fund (£27.8 billion), an expanded British Business Bank (£25.6 billion), and a new £4 billion Growth Capital Initiative for IS-8 scale-ups.
Progress sector by sector
Advanced Manufacturing
£99 million for Made Smarter Adoption, a £40 million Robotics and Autonomous Systems Programme, £50 million for Phase 1 of a National Materials Innovation Programme, and the Aerospace Technology Institute Programme extended by £2.3 billion to 2035. The £2.5 billion DRIVE35 programme is open nationally, though its cluster pilots sit in the West Midlands and North East.
Clean Energy Industries
A record AR7 offshore wind auction (7,000 jobs, £3 billion), the Fusion Strategy progressing at West Burton, and Wylfa in North Wales confirmed as the site for the UK's first small modular reactors, with early site works under way ahead of a final investment decision.
Creative Industries
A £500 million R&D&I package confirmed, plus a further £27 million now open for regional Creative Clusters bids.
Defence
Five Defence Growth Deals, £50 million each (£250 million total), now cover every UK nation and region: Plymouth and the South West (maritime autonomy), South Yorkshire (advanced materials), Scotland (space and maritime, Clyde and Rosyth), Wales (UAVs), and Northern Ireland (cyber and SME supply-chain access, the last confirmed 22 April 2026). The Defence Investment Plan (30 June 2026) adds £15 billion, taking planned spending to £298 billion over four years and the annual budget to almost £80 billion by 2029, though roughly a third of that increase is still unfunded pending Budget 2026.
Digital and Technologies
Five AI Growth Zones confirmed at Culham (Oxfordshire), North East England, South Wales, North Wales, and Lanarkshire (Scotland, over £8 billion of attached investment), plus a new AI Adoption Plan targeting the sector's persistent trust, cost and skills barriers to adoption.
Financial Services
The Berne Financial Services Agreement, a new FCA/PRA Scale-Up Unit, and a reformed Public Offers and Admissions to Trading Regulations regime.
Life Sciences
New Catalysing Innovation Awards and major investment deals routed through the Office for Life Sciences, National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank.
Professional and Business Services
Fresh investment in LawtechUK, with the flagship sector Hub still in design.
The first test: does it survive a change of Prime Minister?
On 22 June 2026, Keir Starmer announced his resignation as Prime Minister and Labour leader. The leadership contest is due to conclude before Parliament's summer recess, with Andy Burnham the frontrunner, though no result has been declared at the time of writing. The UK has had six Prime Ministers in the past decade, and few industrial strategies have outlasted the government that wrote them. Whether BICS, the IS-8 sector plans and their funding bodies survive this transition intact is the question worth watching.
So, is the ambition being matched?
The institutional and financial scaffolding promised a year ago has, in large part, been built. BICS is funded, the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank are operating, and sector schemes, Made Smarter, the National Materials Innovation Programme, Creative Clusters, 5G Innovation Regions, are disbursing money now rather than merely announcing it. What one year of data cannot yet show is whether this translates into the headline ambition; that is a decade-long test the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council's own measurement framework will need to judge over coming years.
For economic development practitioners, the practical point is this: the IS-8 funding landscape is no longer aspirational. It is operational and increasingly granular, worth tracking scheme by scheme and region by region, since that is where the live bids, matched funding and business case evidence now sit.
If you are interested in examining your own economic strategy or sector approach, contact Nigel Wilcock, Mickledore at nwilcock@regionaldevelopment.co.uk