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Back to Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund News – Issue 5

LEP Perspective – Lancashire

Andy Walker, Head of Business Growth at Lancashire County Council

Lancashire has always had a proud tradition of making things and selling them to the world.

But as we increasingly find ourselves in a highly competitive global marketplace we are having to become more agile, creative and bold in order to thrive.

Nurturing innovation to increase productivity is also at the heart of both the government’s national Industrial Strategy and the Northern Powerhouse initiative, and further underpins many of the investments made by the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) and our own Growth Deal.

In fact, Lancashire has seen over £5m invested by NPIF through equity, debt and microfinanceloans over the last 18 months, supporting a range of businesses from emerging tech and software firms, through to those in more established sectors.

However, despite some of the fantastic scale-ups who are involved in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, composites, energy and MedTech across Lancashire, we are aware that in some quarters we retain an ‘oily rag’ image. And while we greatly value the contribution more traditional industries have made to our economy, this also means challenges which are linked to perceptions rather than actual performance.

That’s why the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership has worked hard to develop a refreshed economic narrative. This is centred not only on our core sector strengths and our existing high-value industries, but also our immense potential.  This was also the message Lancashire took to the recent MIPIM investment expo in London.

We used the opportunity to impress upon delegates that Lancashire was putting innovation at the heart of its economy. We highlighted Lancaster University’s £41m Health Innovation Campus, set to be a hub of global excellence within digital health; the University of Central Lancashire’s £30m Engineering Innovation Centre, which will drive advanced engineering teaching, research and knowledge exchange; and Lancashire’s Advanced Manufacturing Energy EZ Cluster.

We also revealed more details of Lancashire’s proposed Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) which we are currently developing with the University of Sheffield.

The AMRC alone would be enough for many regions to shout about, but in Lancashire we are blessed with an array of projects which are set to drive the innovation agenda, boost productivity and facilitate inclusive growth.

With the support of initiatives like the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund helping to fund our next generation of smart, disruptive and growth-hungry SMEs at the grass roots – and these major investments which will enable such firms to compete on a global scale through great R&D, a high-skilled workforce and a collaborative and innovative ecosystem – Lancashire now has the chance to show the world there’s far more to it than old mills, flat caps and steam-powered pistons.

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