England’s Local Growth Plans: why the strategic test is investable sequencing

Local Growth Plans matter because delivery, not diagnosis, is now the binding question

England’s Local Growth Plan framework raises the practical status of local economic strategy. Government guidance expects mayoral strategic authorities, other than the Greater London Authority, to set out an economic overview, priorities shared with government and an investment pipeline to inform public and private investment (MHCLG, 2026) ↗. This creates a clearer link between national economic priorities and local decisions on land, infrastructure, skills, business support and place.

That link matters now. The government’s first-year account of the Modern Industrial Strategy shifts attention towards implementation, investment and delivery milestones (Department for Business and Trade, 2026) ↗. For places, the relevant question is therefore no longer only which sectors or assets they possess. It is which specific local constraints prevent productive activity from growing, and which interventions remove those constraints in the right order.

A locality may have a credible opportunity in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, digital services, life sciences, the visitor economy or the creative industries. Yet that opportunity will not automatically create durable local value. Suitable premises may be unavailable; grid capacity, land assembly or planning certainty may be unresolved; firms may struggle to recruit; or the delivery body may lack the capacity to take a project from concept to operation. These are not peripheral implementation details. They determine whether an opportunity is investable.

**Sanctuary interpretation:** the strategic unit should be a sequence of complementary decisions, not a standalone flagship project. A transport upgrade without serviced employment land, training without employer demand, or new workspace without a viable operating model can each appear rational in isolation. Where their dependencies are unaddressed, however, the combined result can be an expensive set of partially connected assets rather than a functioning local growth system.

A pipeline is useful only when it forces choices

The Local Growth Fund technical document reinforces the practical orientation of Local Growth Plans. It asks authorities to demonstrate alignment with their plan, governance and decision-making arrangements, and the risks and dependencies attached to proposals (MHCLG, 2026) ↗. This is a stronger basis for local economic policy than a conventional narrative strategy. But it does not itself create disciplined prioritisation.

A long pipeline can conceal a refusal to choose. Projects are often included because they are locally popular, politically visible or potentially fundable, while the less visible preconditions for delivery remain unfunded. The consequence is familiar: capital is committed before commercial demand, ownership, utilities, revenue funding or delivery capability has been secured.

A decision-grade pipeline should instead move through four linked questions:

1. **What is the binding constraint?** Define the problem precisely: for example, constrained power connections, fragmented ownership, a shortage of grow-on space, weak access to jobs, insufficient employer engagement or lack of programme-management capacity.

2. **What must be true before capital is committed?** Establish the planning route, land control, delivery partners, commercial assumptions, operating model and financing pathway.

3. **Which intervention comes first?** Prioritise the action that closes the critical dependency, even when it is less visible than a major construction scheme.

4. **What evidence would change the decision?** Set tests that trigger acceleration, redesign, delay or withdrawal.

This approach can favour enabling activity such as remediation, utilities work, business-demand testing, employer brokerage or development capacity over an immediate capital announcement. That may look less ambitious in the short term. It can nevertheless be the more credible route to later private investment and productive local employment.

The Local Growth Fund’s place-led design gives selected mayoral strategic authorities greater scope to tailor infrastructure, business-support and skills interventions to local conditions (MHCLG, 2026) ↗. Flexibility is valuable precisely because local constraints differ. Its benefit is lost, however, if discretion produces a larger collection of weakly connected commitments.

The trade-off is not local freedom versus central control; it is discretion versus comparability

There is a strong case for moving away from repeated, short-term competitions. They consume scarce local capacity, reward bid-writing and can encourage authorities to reshape priorities around available funds rather than local need. The Northern Growth Strategy identifies centralisation, short settlements and fragmented responsibilities as barriers to planning and delivering at scale (MHCLG, 2026) ↗.

But local discretion has a management counterpart. Authorities need a defensible way to compare unlike propositions: a town-centre acquisition, grid-enablement scheme, transport intervention, productivity service, skills pathway or employment-site remediation cannot sensibly be ranked on a single forecast of jobs or gross value added. Forecasts are uncertain, benefits arrive over different timeframes and connected projects can lead to double counting.

The answer is not false precision. It is a transparent portfolio framework that exposes rather than hides judgement. At minimum, each proposition should be assessed for strategic fit, additionality, dependency closure, delivery capability, distribution of benefits and burdens, resilience to market change, revenue and maintenance exposure, and learning value where uncertainty remains material.

This also makes political choices more honest. An authority may reasonably place greater weight on inclusive access to employment, high-street renewal, climate resilience or community wealth. The discipline is to state that weighting, identify the evidence supporting it and show what has consequently been deprioritised.

Fiscal reform sharpens the case for this discipline. In considering tax-revenue sharing with English mayors, the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlights the balance required between stronger growth incentives, equalisation and exposure to revenue volatility (Phillips, 2026) ↗. **Sanctuary interpretation:** if mayoral authorities assume greater exposure to economic downside, they should not respond by accumulating more unfunded commitments. They need tighter scenario testing, clearer contingent liabilities and a smaller number of propositions whose critical risks are actively owned.

Past place-based policy shows why capability is part of the intervention

Local Growth Plans should not be treated as a wholly fresh start. Their formal position within the current devolution and growth framework is significant, but England has a substantial history of place-based industrial policy and local growth architecture.

Research on Local Enterprise Partnerships found that attempts to develop place-sensitive industrial strategy were constrained by institutional capability, fragmented finance and unsettled relationships with central government (Fai and Tomlinson, 2019) ↗. A later review argues that place-based industrial policy must develop productive capabilities and territorial capacity, rather than merely name sectors or reproduce national priorities locally (Dawley, MacKinnon and Pollock, 2025) ↗.

The mechanism is straightforward. A plan can identify clean-energy potential, but it cannot deliver it without working relationships with network operators, landowners, planners and investors. It can identify labour-market demand, but outcomes will remain weak without ways to influence employer practice and provider provision. It can promise high-street renewal, but property-led intervention alone will not resolve fragmented ownership, weak trading conditions, lease constraints or the need for long-term place management.

The Local Growth Fund provides useful accountability mechanisms through requirements around governance, risk and reporting (MHCLG, 2026) ↗. Those mechanisms should be used to surface failure early, not simply to record delivery activity. Construction starts, money spent and people enrolled are not sufficient evidence that a constraint has been removed.

**Sanctuary recommendation:** every major proposition should include disconfirming tests. These might include a deadline for securing occupier demand, a maximum acceptable delay to a grid connection, a minimum threshold of employer commitment, or a ceiling on continuing operating subsidy. Such tests are not a case against ambition. They are a safeguard against locking scarce capital into an assumption that no longer holds.

A decision-grade pipeline for local economic value

The practical opportunity is to use Local Growth Plans as a repeatable decision system rather than a ten-year narrative. Sanctuary proposes five disciplines.

**First, define the economic problem before selecting a project.** “Low productivity” is not yet actionable. “Small manufacturers cannot adopt automation because suitable premises, finance and management support are disconnected” is. A precise diagnosis enables intervention design and later evaluation.

**Second, build cross-system packages.** Each priority should explain how infrastructure, planning, finance, skills and business support reinforce one another. This matters especially in town centres, station areas and employment corridors, where an asset may need simultaneously to support local enterprise, employment access and strategic-sector growth.

**Third, separate desirability from readiness.** Publish three categories: propositions ready to commit; propositions in development subject to named evidence or approvals; and a reserve list. This preserves ambition without implying that every desirable scheme is equally deliverable.

**Fourth, assign a named owner to every critical dependency.** The plan should identify who is responsible for land, planning, utilities, financing, workforce delivery, commercial demand and long-term stewardship. Collaboration is essential, but a dependency owned by everyone is frequently owned by no one.

**Fifth, review the portfolio regularly.** Quarterly review should test assumptions, delivery capacity and opportunity cost, allowing development funding to be redirected when evidence changes. Strategic consistency means retaining the purpose of the plan; it does not mean defending every original project.

For SMEs, social enterprises and residents, this can turn abstract growth policy into practical economic participation. The relevant outcomes are usable premises, accessible procurement and finance, employer-linked training, reliable routes into work and business support that responds to firms’ actual constraints. These are the channels through which industrial strategy can improve entrepreneurship, employability and local economic value rather than simply raise the profile of a place.

There are limits. Local Growth Plans cannot substitute for national choices on energy networks, fiscal policy, transport, regulation or redistribution, and they cannot guarantee private investment. Their value is narrower but consequential: they can improve how a place identifies trade-offs, prepares propositions, allocates scarce capacity and remains accountable when conditions change.

Conclusion

England’s Local Growth Plans should not be judged by the polish of their vision or the length of their project lists. Their strategic test is whether they make hard choices legible and more likely to work: which constraint matters most, what comes first, what must be true for success, who owns each dependency and when leaders will change course.

The current framework creates an opportunity to connect local knowledge with national industrial priorities and more flexible local investment. It will fulfil that promise only if plans become operating tools for governed choices. A decision-grade pipeline is not a technocratic add-on to local growth strategy. It is the means by which ambition becomes credible investment and, ultimately, durable local value.