At today’s Festival of Flourishing Regions, Business West announced the formation of the Futures West Foundation for Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Growth. The Foundation brings business leaders, academics and policy makers together to tackle long-term regional challenges to raise productivity, growth and innovation.

The Foundation covers the broader economic geography of the upper part of South West England, including Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swindon. It will work with some of the region’s most important businesses and sectors to establish and promote a new regional economic narrative, with an evidence base and work programme.  

The collaborative research will provide the evidence base required to better inform policy and attract investment to help address key challenges for our region. The initial work programme will look at how to understand and improve our economic performance and raise regional productivity. It will address some of the key challenges blocking sustainable and inclusive economic growth and the future success of our key and emerging economic sectors.  

Over the next six months, the Foundation aims to recruit an inaugural Director and Independent Chair, and work with key partners to establish an action plan for the first six months of operations in partnership with businesses, universities, and policy makers. 

Matt Griffith, Director of Policy at Business West, said “Devolution and the need for economic growth look like being central priorities for whoever forms the next government. Alongside substantial challenges, our region also has huge economic strengths and potential but has sometimes struggled to fully articulate a vision and provide a compelling offer to either central government or local people and businesses. This new Foundation creates a new partnership between businesses and universities to better understand the strengths of our region and work collaboratively with others to articulate how we can offer something unique to help solve our pressing local and national challenges.  

“The Futures West Foundation brings business, academia and policy together to provide the evidence base to identify how to help our key business sectors to grow and create future jobs and tax revenue and which levers – for example through greater business investment levels locally or more investment in infrastructure or transport– need to be pulled to drive real change for our regional communities.” 

The UK urgently needs to find and grow key businesses and sectors of the economy, and it needs to do this at a local level to drive prosperity. Organisations like Cambridge Ahead, Business LDN and Northern Powerhouse demonstrate how businesses and universities working together can make long-term significant improvements to their region. Futures West aims to emulate this success and produce independent, credible and cutting-edge research that provides the evidence base required to drive policy change, support our key sectors and attract investment.  

The Foundation will engage with local and national policy makers, researchers, civil servants, advisors and political leaders. This includes sponsoring a new national festival and programme on improving the UK’s regional economic performance in collaboration with the Growing Together Alliance - consisting of Northern Powerhouse Partnership, BusinessLDN, Business South, Business West, Cambridge Ahead and the North West Business Leadership Team.