New report by ScaleUp Institute, Innovate Finance and Deloitte recommends National Growth Blueprint to fill £15bn capital gap to fuel economic prosperity.
Urgent action is required to close the UK’s growth capital gap by accelerating, evolving and expanding existing initiatives under a national framework for growth.
The report, The Future of Growth Capital, stresses that closing the emerging £15bn gap will provide opportunities for aiding the UK’s economic recovery post-Covid, generating future prosperity and boosting regional economies, productivity, innovation and internationalism.
The report lays out five specific and practical recommendations to tackle the long-standing, structural problem of a lack of available capital for scaleup companies. The recommendations are:
- Create a ‘National Blueprint for Growth’ that delivers a strategic joined up approach to support and champion more consistent and effective economic growth across all regions and sectors
- Accelerate the unlocking of Institutional and Corporate Funding through changes in legislation and organisation that crowds in the existing significant private sector capital that can make inroads into closing the growth capital gap
- Expand and build upon the British Business Bank (BBB) by strengthening the regional presence of the BBB with empowered decision making deployed under a national framework, and continue the developments of its products along with Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), Development Bank of Wales and Invest NI
- Expand the role and scale of Innovate UK and its direct deployment of innovation capital to our most innovative, early stage and scaling businesses
- 5. Create a “Future Opportunity Fund” to develop diverse sectors and impact investing potential that is focused on emerging, socially inclusive markets, including the carbon net-zero economy
