Mayors in England will receive dedicated research and development funding for the first time, the Prime Minister’s Office said on 9 October 2026. The existing Local Innovation Partnerships Fund (LIPF) will be devolved to established mayoral strategic authorities from 2028, and the government will commit £1 billion through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) over the next four years to high-growth innovation clusters. The release presents the move as the start of a wider effort to devolve innovation funding to mayors.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham set out the package in a speech at the Innovation Nation Summit in Manchester. The Downing Street release calls the LIPF transfer a first step. It says the government will devolve a substantially increased share of later-stage innovation funding to local leaders, including in areas beyond the existing established mayoral strategic authorities, as set out in its Rewiring the State Cabinet Statement. No timetable for that wider transfer was given.
What was announced
The package has three parts. First, established mayoral strategic authorities will receive devolved later-stage innovation funding, which will sit alongside new Good Growth Funds, described in the release as a single, flexible, long-term growth budget for local leaders. In his speech the Prime Minister said the government would say more at the Budget about how Good Growth Funds will work.
Second, the £1 billion through UKRI will back high-growth innovation clusters in the Industrial Strategy’s priority sectors across the UK. Third, No.10 North will be asked to bring forward partnerships between clusters in the Industrial Strategy’s eight growth-driving sectors, building on collaboration between Cambridge and Manchester. The first will link the Northern Growth Corridor and the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor in sectors including life sciences, digital and technology, and advanced manufacturing.
The LIPF change applies only to established mayoral strategic authorities in England. The release says the government will work with the devolved governments and local and regional stakeholders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to explore how the benefits of local control can be spread.
We are doing so much right, but we can do so much more.
Andy Burnham, Prime Minister, Innovation Nation Summit, 9 October 2026
How ministers plan to devolve innovation funding to mayors
The fund changing hands is a young one, and the Downing Street release gives no figure for it. The Local Innovation Partnerships Fund is a £500 million UKRI-led programme running from 2026 to 2031, built to grow high-potential innovation clusters through partnerships between civic institutions, businesses and universities, according to UKRI’s description of the fund. It has two strands: an earmarked strand for named places with established governance, including Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, the Liverpool City Region, the North East and Greater London, and a competed strand offering up to £20 million per place for areas outside the earmarked awards.
The earmarked strand also covers the Glasgow City region, the Cardiff City region and a corridor spanning Belfast and Derry-Londonderry, which sit outside the English mayoral system. The government’s first-year review of its Industrial Strategy, published on GOV.UK, counts 17 strategic locations in the fund, with £50 million for Glasgow, £30 million for Cardiff and £30 million for the Belfast corridor. Handing the fund to established mayoral strategic authorities is the vehicle ministers will use to devolve innovation funding to mayors from 2028; what happens to the fund’s awards outside England after the transfer is not addressed in the release.
The eight growth-driving sectors
The first-year review names the Industrial Strategy’s eight growth-driving sectors as advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, creative industries, defence, digital and technologies, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services. The strategy itself was published on 23 June 2025, and the review lists 22 Industrial Strategy Zones alongside named clusters such as compound semiconductors in South Wales, advanced materials in Greater Manchester, financial technology in Leeds, artificial intelligence in London, and automotive around Birmingham and Coventry.
Several of those clusters sit around research universities, from Greater Manchester, home of the University of Manchester, to the life sciences concentration around the University of Cambridge. As ministers devolve innovation funding to mayors, that sector list will shape which local bids stand a chance of UKRI’s £1 billion, because the release ties the cluster money to the Industrial Strategy’s priority sectors.
Where universities fit
The release says the cluster partnerships will connect leading universities, businesses and local leaders so that ideas move more quickly from research into commercial products. It adds that businesses need strong links with universities and public institutions as well as skilled workers, affordable space, infrastructure and finance. In the speech transcript, the Prime Minister said the government is investing over 80 billion in research and innovation in this spending review; the transcript gives no currency symbol. He also announced £33 million of government funding to speed up dementia treatment development, which he said reaches £48 million with industry money.
Several details were not disclosed: the current size of the LIPF, how much later-stage innovation funding will eventually be devolved, how the £1 billion will be allocated and which clusters will qualify, and whether universities will have any formal role in mayoral funding decisions.
What it means
TED analysis:
- For university leaders: from 2028 part of the innovation funding that universities and their partners compete for will be decided by mayoral authorities rather than in Whitehall. Institutions in established mayoral areas have until 2028 to help shape local priorities before the transfer.
- For institutions outside mayoral areas: the LIPF change covers only established mayoral strategic authorities in England. Universities elsewhere in England, and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have no confirmed route to equivalent devolved funding yet.
- For investors and spinout teams: the £1 billion through UKRI is the larger and nearer-term commitment, but the release does not say whether it is new money or drawn from existing UKRI budgets. The allocation method will decide which clusters benefit.
