Start the week following the money, and it is moving north. The throughline running across today’s news is private and institutional capital lining up behind the North of England — a major bank pledging billions, clean-energy programmes seeding tens of thousands of jobs, and a string of city districts moving from prospectus to construction. The North spent years asking to be funded; increasingly, it is being invested in.
A bank bets on the North
The headline came from the City, not the council chamber. NatWest has committed £20bn over ten years to the North of England, unveiled by chief executive Paul Thwaite at the Great North Investment Summit in Leeds. Aimed at energy, transport, infrastructure, regeneration and housing — and tied explicitly to the region’s mayors — it is the clearest sign yet that devolution has become investable in the eyes of the institutions that fund development. It sits within a Great North investment prospectus that northern leaders say is worth more than £14bn, from Merseyside and Cheshire to Hull and the North East.
Clean energy as an employment engine
In the North West, the energy transition is becoming a jobs story. The government has confirmed £11bn for the HyNet hydrogen and carbon-capture programme at Ellesmere Port, expected to create 6,000 jobs and draw £5bn of private investment. It anchors a wider North West Clean Power Plan projecting up to 35,000 green jobs by 2028, with Cheshire and Warrington among the biggest beneficiaries — a chance to convert an industrial heartland into a low-carbon one.
City districts, rising
Across the North, brownfield land is becoming neighbourhoods. In York, the £2bn York Central scheme is turning 45 hectares beside the station into 2,500 homes and a million square feet of commercial space. In Hull, the East Bank Urban Village will bring up to 850 homes to a long-neglected riverside. And in Blackpool, a £2bn Growth and Prosperity Programme — led by the £350m Talbot Gateway — is working to give a seaside town a year-round economy.
Building on real strength
Perhaps the most telling story came from South Yorkshire, where a new Mayoral Development Zone for the Don Valley Corridor aims to deliver 10,500 homes and 18,500 jobs across Sheffield and Rotherham. Built around the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre — already a magnet for Boeing, McLaren and Rolls-Royce — it is regeneration anchored in genuine, world-class industrial capability rather than hope.
The bigger picture
A bank’s balance sheet, a hydrogen cluster, four city districts and an advanced-manufacturing corridor: on the surface, unrelated. Underneath, one story. Capital is being assembled, the mayors are setting the priorities, and the projects are increasingly real and under construction. The North’s task now is delivery — turning £20bn pledges and £14bn prospectuses into homes, jobs and working infrastructure. On this week’s evidence, the foundations are being laid.
The North is FU7URE’s daily briefing on the people, capital and infrastructure reshaping the North of England. Subscribe to the free newsletter to get it in your inbox each morning.
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