Managing the mission to beef up growth

Delivering regional growth is at the core of the Government's political and economic agenda, with the National Wealth Fund (NWF) crucial to achieving that goal.The fund may have changed its name since it began five years ago as the UK Infrastructure Bank, but it still has a laser focus on supporting government's growth and clean energy missions, and has committed to going ‘further and faster'. This includes the launch of a new Regional Project Accelerator offer to local government to tackle complex and regionally significant projects across the UK, with longer and deeper support for high growth mayoral strategic authorities and city regions.Tony Walsh, who was there at the birth of the UK Infrastructure Bank in 2021, has now returned to his roots at the Leeds-based policy bank he helped to set up following a high-powered 38-year corporate banking career at Barclays.After a year as a founding member, he took on a non-executive director role at NIC Services Group before coming back to the NWF last October, this time as senior strategic adviser for local authorities.Speaking to The MJ, the Yorkshireman emphasised the fund has ‘now expanded the number of sectors we look after'.He said: ‘In January this year we updated our strategic plan, where we talked about our five-year ambition, again to support the further work in clean energy, absolutely to continue the work on regional growth or what many people now term place, but also to work alongside the Government's priority industrial sectors to strengthen our capabilities in this space.'Operationally independent, but wholly owned by the Treasury, the fund now has a staff of 300, nearly all of them working out of its northern headquarters.It is capitalised with £27.9bn, with £8.4bn invested by the start of this year. The new strategic plan committed to deploying the remaining capital by 2030-31, driving more than £100bn into the UK economy, with investments creating or supporting 200,000 jobs.The strategic plan also set out what the NWF has said is a more targeted approach, focusing on government's Industrial Strategy sectors and Infrastructure Strategy priorities.Ten sectors (see below) have been identified where the fund expects to have the ‘most catalytic opportunities' over the next five years. These include carbon capture, usage and storage, transport infrastructure and place-based regeneration.This comes alongside a further 15 sectors where it will pursue investment targeting high growth, innovative projects and businesses, and accelerate the delivery of core infrastructure. These include artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, defence and life sciences, retrofit and heat networks.Delving into the Regional Project Accelerator Offer, four Strategic Partnerships are in place, with Glasgow City Region, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, the West Midlands Combined Authority and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Walsh points to GMCA as an example of an area striding ahead on investment, with the NWF backing the city region in a £500m partnership with the Good Growth Fund.Through the Strategic Partnership, the NWF rigorously evaluated GMCA's pipeline of projects, identifying significant opportunities in transport, place-based regeneration, and clean energy. Walsh said: ‘It gives a real opportunity for people to come together and talk about how they can make a difference, irrespective of whether they work in central government, local government, the private sector, pension funds, you name it.'And last month, the fund announced a £40.6m loan to East Riding of Yorkshire Council to support the construction of the Howden Relief Road, a major infrastructure project to support long-term economic development in the region, alongside 1,800 new homes.Expected to open in 2027, the road will also support the creation of hundreds of jobs by allowing the extension of the existing Howdens kitchen factory.But, with a report from the Localis think-tank warning last week of ministers risking ‘deepening regional imbalances' if they pursued a ‘uniform Greater Manchester style metro-mayoral model' across the country, does he agree more attention needs to be placed on tackling regional development asymmetries?‘We signed the four strategic partnerships in October last year. We'd ultimately like to expand the number,' he replied.‘Working with our shareholder the Treasury, we signed those partnerships in the spirit of a test and learn, and [as to] how we can ultimately take the number of partnerships we have to a wider number, we're thoughtful about that right now. Would we be able to cover the whole of the UK in that expansion? No, we wouldn't. However, what we do want to do is maintain those other relationships as well.'In that context, the NWF is developing a knowledge service available to all local authorities to share expertise on the key sectors, project development and bespoke finance and delivery mechanisms. He added: ‘We'll also work on a number of regionally significant projects, and now we're working on about a dozen of those. Many of those sit in the partnerships, but not all of them. What we want to do is make sure we can have a dialogue with all four corners of the UK, and we see the knowledge service – lighter touch, not a strategic partnership – as a way of maintaining that.'The fund supports regionally significant projects by offering low cost, flexible lending directly to local government, with the return linked to government bond yields with an extra 0.4% added on top.According to Walsh, the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) lending facility, operated by the UK Debt Management Office on behalf of the Treasury has a higher margin of 0.6-0.8%.‘What we can also be is flexible, so on many of the projects that we've worked on, we've allowed staged drawdowns of the loan as the project ramps up, whereas with PWLB, you'll take your money on day one. We can lend over the long term like the PWLB, and we just try to structure the flexibility of the product specific to the project we're working on.'Will the fund's strategic focus on clean energy be significantly undermined by the massive swing in last month's elections towards a new swathe of leaders whose politics are not naturally aligned to net zero?‘We work closely with the investment teams in the strategic partnerships. Has anything slowed down as a result of what's been going on recently? Absolutely not.'He added: ‘Are local authorities going through a lot of change, embedding new councils and everything else? Of course they are, but our relationships in the main tends to be at the combined authority level. Remember, we're about regional growth, as well as clean energy. It's devolved funding that drives regional growth, and in my view, we will continue to be very busy.‘To bring the NWF onboard, partners need to ‘provide evidence that they have got a list of opportunities that are front and centre, that we can support by deploying our balance sheet and that they've got the capacity to work with us such that we can really accelerate some of these larger projects'. He added: ‘What we wouldn't want to do is work with a new combined authority as a strategic partnership if a lot of the projects they're working on are not something we can make the most impact on.'Working alongside fellow Public Financial Institutions such as Homes England and the Office for Investment, he is determined to ‘make it really easy for combined authorities to know which front door to go into' to deliver the elusive growth UK PLC so desperately needs. Ten sectors where the NWF expects to have the deepest rolePortsCarbon capture, usage and storageHydrogenBattery manufacturing and electric vehicle supply chainGreen steelPower gridEnergy storageNuclearTransport infrastructurePlace-based regeneration

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ECONOMIC GROWTH

Managing the mission to beef up growth

By Ann McGauran | 10 June 2026

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