The case for investing in the North is stronger than it has been in years. The mayors are now well-established, there is capital available, and investors are actively looking for places to put it to work.
The signal from the national government couldn’t be clearer – the King’s Speech on 13 May confirmed £45 billion for Northern Powerhouse Rail, while the Enhancing Financial Services Bill and the Leeds Reforms are specifically designed to make it easier for firms to lend, invest and back projects across the UK.
So why do so many of these conversations still stall before anything happens?
The front door is still hard to find
But if you talk to the people actually trying to invest: pension funds, insurers, asset managers, advisory firms – you hear similar stories. The process is too hard to navigate.
An investor may start with the Office for Investment, which is trying to improve how these enquiries are handled. They may then be pointed towards the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority pipeline, the British Business Bank, the National Wealth Fund, or another part of the system. None of that is wrong; each body has a role to play. But the investor does not experience the system as an organogram. They experience it as time: another call, another introduction, another explanation of the same opportunity to a slightly different audience. That is when momentum starts to drain away.
Speed matters more than people admit. Take AstraZeneca’s cancelled £450 million investment at Speke, in south Liverpool, as an example – the company told MPs it needed confirmation of government support by August 2024 to keep the project on track, but confirmation did not come until October. By then, the business case had shifted. As the company’s UK chair put it: “It was mostly an issue of speed.” The project no longer worked. A serious investor, a serious project, a serious place, and it walked away.
And the North lost a great opportunity.
The structural problem
The missed opportunity here is bigger than people realise. Research from AtkinsRéalis found that 79% of institutional investors are interested in programmes led by mayoral combined authorities, and a third are already looking at options. Only 3% had similar regional programmes elsewhere in their global portfolios. There is genuine interest here. But there’s only a short window to turn that interest into actual investment.
Part of the problem is structural. Every combined authority works differently because they have different powers, funding setups, and priorities. In fact, that’s devolution working as intended – mayors are making decisions based on what their regions actually need.
This is not a story about Northern authorities failing to sell themselves. If anything, it is the opposite: devolution has created stronger local leadership and a focus on local priorities. The problem is that the existing national investment plumbing is still adjusting to how place-led growth actually works.
But for investors trying to work across the North, it can feel like re-inventing the wheel every time.
The right person in one authority is the wrong person in another. The process changes. The language changes. Even understanding where decisions sit can take months.
One Canadian investor managing more than £10 billion put it pretty bluntly: “Local governments can unlock regional funding by being properly resourced and legally empowered to engage in infrastructure partnerships.”
That capacity still varies a lot across the North.
What good looks like
The issue is not a lack of capital. Investors are there.
The Rochdale Riverside deal showed what can happen when local leadership and institutional funding align properly. M&G backed the £80 million retail and leisure development through a 35-year inflation-linked lease with Rochdale Borough Council. In its own analysis of the UK private markets opportunity, M&G pointed to years of underinvestment in housing, transport, healthcare and public infrastructure.
Another strong example is Legal & General’s investment in Newcastle Helix. Working with Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University, L&G backed the redevelopment of a former coal mine and brewery into a £350 million innovation quarter in central Newcastle. L&G says the wider investment has helped create more than 7,000 jobs, with Helix expected to deliver 4,000 jobs and 700 homes. It also invested £65 million into two of the site’s main commercial buildings, The Lumen and The Spark. That is what this looks like when the route is clear: local leadership, a defined place-based proposition, and institutional capital able to move.
Deals like that should not feel unusual.
The missing layer
Some progress is happening. The Office for Investment has become more active since its relaunch in 2025. The National Wealth Fund’s Regional Project Accelerator talks about operating on a “no wrong door” basis alongside the British Business Bank and Great British Energy. The ABI’s Investment Delivery Forum has also done useful work connecting insurers with Greater Manchester on net zero infrastructure.
But speed matters.
Part of the problem is that too much of the system is still better at allocating funding to need than backing growth propositions at the speed investors work to. That leaves mayoral authorities trying to turn local priorities into investable propositions, while investors try to work out which national door, local contact or public finance institution is supposed to help.
A national push for investment does not help someone understand how housing policy in West Yorkshire differs from that in South Yorkshire, or who they should speak to in the North East when a clean energy project lands on their desk. That kind of place-based navigation – knowing the terrain, knowing the people and where the decisions are made – is still the missing layer. And it’s a gap that intermediaries with genuine regional relationships are well placed to fill.
This government has tied its credibility to growth. The structures being built are the right ones. The bigger question is whether anyone moves fast enough before the political momentum fades.
The North doesn’t have a capital problem; it has a coordination problem.
And the window to fix it is open. But the clock is ticking…
by David Tripepi-Lewis, Director