If there is a single thread running through the North’s news this week, it is this: the region’s mayoral authorities have stopped waiting to be funded and started acting as funders themselves. Billions of pounds of investment capacity were confirmed across Liverpool, Greater Manchester and the North East — not as grants to be competed for, but as standing investment vehicles the regions now control. Add a landmark rail decision looming over Bradford and a Sheffield agency making national headlines, and you have a snapshot of a North increasingly writing its own economic story.
Liverpool’s £2bn statement of intent
The biggest number of the week came from Merseyside. Liverpool City Region has launched a £2bn Investment Fund, the largest in its history, consolidating public money into a single pot that Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram unveiled at MIPIM. The first tranche alone targets more than 520,000 square feet of commercial space and over 2,800 jobs, including the city’s first new-build Grade A offices in 15 years. It sits within a plan to grow the region’s economy by £10bn over the next decade and unlock some 64,000 homes.
Greater Manchester gets the money — and the keys
In Manchester, the story was about power as much as cash. The city region has been handed £50m through the new Local Innovation Partnerships programme, with the University of Manchester playing a leading role across advanced materials, digital and AI, life sciences and low carbon. Crucially, the funding comes with the authority for the mayor to decide where it goes — part of a wider Whitehall shift devolving innovation money to regional leaders. The same week, Greater Manchester leaders signed off the first £400m of their Good Growth plan for homes, jobs and infrastructure, the opening move in roughly £3bn of spending.
The North East bets on its own research
The North East joined the pattern with a more targeted intervention. The region’s universities and mayor have launched a £22.5m Inspire Fund aimed at the perennial weak point in regional economies: turning world-class research into investable companies that stay local. Part of a £100m framework, it puts early-stage finance behind clean tech, digital, life sciences and advanced manufacturing — exactly the gap where the market has historically failed places outside the South East.
Manchester becomes Ireland’s UK beachhead
Capital isn’t only coming from public coffers. Irish firms are doubling down on Manchester, with an Enterprise Ireland trade mission bringing 30 high-growth companies to the city. The animation studio Kavaleer is opening its first overseas office there, and recruitment firm Osborne its first UK base. Behind the headlines sits a striking statistic: 38% of Irish companies plan to significantly increase investment in the North of England, and one in five intend to hire here this year.
Bradford’s defining months
Few places have more riding on the coming weeks than Bradford. The city is central to the £45bn Northern Powerhouse Rail programme, with a government decision on the business case for a new city-centre station due by summer. It isn’t standing still in the meantime: its City Village regeneration, with ECF appointed and a hybrid planning application approved in February, will bring up to 1,000 new homes back into the heart of the centre.
A creative dividend — and a Sheffield success story
The week also brought recognition of the North’s creative strength. A £150m creative industries fund under the government’s Industrial Strategy will be split across six regions outside London — four of them Northern: Greater Manchester, Liverpool, the North East and West Yorkshire. And in Sheffield, the agency MarGen has been named the UK’s fastest-growing AI SEO agency and Agency of the Week, ranking second nationally for getting businesses cited inside AI answers. As tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews reshape how customers find companies, a Northern firm is helping write the playbook.
The bigger picture
Taken individually, each announcement is a headline. Taken together, they describe a structural shift. Power and money are moving closer to the places they affect, and the North’s combined authorities are learning to behave like investors — assembling capital, setting priorities and answering for results. The test now is execution: funds are only as good as the pipelines they deliver. But for founders, builders and investors across the North, the centre of gravity has unmistakably moved.
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