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Back to Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund News – Issue 8

Foreword

Welcome to the eighth edition of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund newsletter.

Firstly, Season’s Greetings to our readers.  Here’s to a successful 2020!

With so much going on within Westminster and elsewhere this is a somewhat delayed publication but one where we can both look back on our successes to date, including the very positive findings from our first ‘Early Assessment Report’, and look forward to NPIF increasing its impact as we announce the release of a £106m tranche of funding to our fund managers.

The assessment report was undertaken by independent research provider SQW Ltd and reported that we are distributing finance widely across the regions, successfully engaging with our partners and building business confidence in accessing finance. Stand-out statistics include 60 per cent of firms reporting that sales were higher as a result of funding and 75 per cent of firms increasing headcount.  The quality of jobs also looked high with a large proportion of salaries above the national average.

Despite the positive report we are keen to do better and this quarter we also want to touch upon our work to promote the benefits of the fund to businesses in areas such as Humber, Cheshire and Warrington, Lancashire, Cumbria and Tees Valley where take up of funding could be improved.   Along with our partners in the Local Enterprise Partnerships and Growth Hubs we have been working incredibly hard over the past two and a half years to ensure that businesses across the patch are able to benefit from NPIF funding and fuel their growth ambitions.

I mentioned the release of the final £106m tranche of funding and we are pleased that performance to date has meant that we could make the decision to release these funds earlier than planned.  We hope that by doing this we can see investment rates continue in the strong vein that we have seen so far.

The case study this issue illustrates the way NPIF is working.   Our investment into Richmond-based food manufacturer, Holmesterne Farm, in 2018 has allowed the company to hire 20 new staff and introduce a range of meat-free products. This is just one example of a number of firms across the north that are performing exceptionally well and we’re confident that we will have lots more to talk about as our investment pipeline remains strong.

I hope you enjoy the latest edition of our newsletter.

Ken Cooper
Managing Director at the British Business Bank

The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank…

Editors Notes