From Strategy to Site: Delivering the Places where Innovation Happens
On Wednesday 20 May, BondBryan:Fairhursts, in partnership with UK Cities & Partners, hosted a private lunchtime roundtable at UKREiiF in Leeds, bringing together senior leaders from local government, investment management, innovation districts and strategic delivery to address a central question:
how do we move innovation-led development from strategy into the ground?
Chaired by Dominic Curran, Head of Communications at Real Estate:UK; the new trade body formed from the merger of the British Property Federation, the Association of Real Estate Funds and the Investment Property Forum; the session drew on direct experience across advanced manufacturing, defence, life sciences, deep tech and science parks, spanning cities from Liverpool and Sheffield to Stevenage and Cambridge.
The discussion spanned three core questions:
Unlocking innovation-led growth
At the heart of the discussion was a shared recognition that place quality, housing, skills and governance are not peripheral to the innovation economy, they are its foundations.
Attendees stressed that housing is a precondition, not an afterthought. If workers cannot access decent, aspirational homes near an innovation district, the district risks becoming a commuter destination rather than a genuine community. The gap between earnings in high-tech sectors and local housing costs is a real constraint on talent retention.
The discussion highlighted the critical role of further education and skills pipelines tailored to actual employer need. One compelling example: the argument that won a major inward investment to the South West was a commitment from local FE colleges to mirror a company’s production line in their training programmes, with a ready- made, trained workforce on day one.
On governance, devolution and the mayoral model were broadly welcomed as a structural improvement. The UK is becoming more like successful European regional economies, with mayors who have genuine power, clear sector strategies, and the ability to join up place, university and capital. Combined authorities are inherently accountable for delivering high-value jobs in ways that district councils are not.
Insights and case studies
Institutional investors are actively looking to deploy more capital into UK regional markets, but need credible exit strategies, viable project pipelines, and evidence that local authorities can use planning levers, land value, net internal area, Section 106, pragmatically through economic cycles, not just in good times.
Sheffield’s Innovation Spine offered a live case study: the first three months were spent getting all public sector partners to agree their shared objectives in writing, clarifying roles before anything else. That foundation is now enabling a pivot from evidence-gathering to specific investment propositions.
“The first thing we did was get all the partners to understand where the shared objectives were between them, and make them write that down. We reminded ourselves of what each of our roles are in making that happen.” – Charlotte Thompson
Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter demonstrated the value of an independent delivery vehicle, owned by universities and the city but operating commercially, as the structural innovation that made development possible without political distortion.
“The key decision at Sciontec was to recognise that any delivery vehicle owned by multiple shareholders is always going to face vested interests. We chose to go with an independent structure; recognising those shareholder voices but not being captured by them. That is what allowed us to make genuine commercial decisions in service of the whole Knowledge Quarter, not just individual partners.” – Barbara Spicer CBE
Innovation space is often over-designed for occupiers who don’t yet exist. A more graduated approach, quality environments at accessible price points, would deepen occupier pipelines and improve the investment case for growing SMEs and spinouts.
The session closed with a shared call to action: to present innovation places in investment language, returns, duration, exit, and to build the connective infrastructure of narrative, vehicles and relationships that makes regional UK legible to global capital.
“Trust is based on track record. Places that have used the levers available to them, through political cycles and economic cycles, those are the places worth doing business with. As simple as that”
Takeaways
Based on the discussion, the five most important things places can do to attract and sustain innovation-led investment are:
About the hosts
BondBryan:Fairhursts is the specialist division of Bond Bryan dedicated to the design and delivery of environments that enable innovation. Working across science, research, advanced manufacturing, defence, health and higher education, the practice creates places where people, ideas and investment come together to drive growth.
UK Cities & Partners (UKCAP) is the UK’s national platform for promoting city-region investment opportunities to global investors. It delivers the UK Investment Pavilion at EXPO REAL as the country’s unified presence at Europe’s leading real estate and infrastructure investment forum, bringing together the UK’s most forward-looking cities, regions and private sector partners.
