Government confirms £4.8m for Cambridge x Manchester Innovation Partnership ahead of Chancellor’s Spending Review

A £4.8million investment in a Cambridge x Manchester Innovation Partnership has been announced by the government.

The funding over three years aims to embed ‘place-based growth’ and will be led by the University of Cambridge and University of Manchester.

The government said the funding is designed to kickstart a new partnership between the high-growth cities, strengthening links between “hubs of innovation” in order to attract more business investment and pilot new approaches to collaboration, which could set examples for cities, universities and governments worldwide.

The funding from Research England will be swelled by further investment from the two universities, taking the total to £6m.

The aim is to strengthen research networks, accelerate scale-up growth, drive private sector investment into R&D and attract new foreign direct investment.

It will be supported by two mayoral combined authorities, city councils, key businesses, such as AstraZeneca, Arm, Roku and Microsoft, venture capitalists Northern Gritstone and Cambridge Investment Capital, and angel investors Cambridge Angles and Manchester Angels.

Prof Deborah Prentice, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “This pioneering initiative brings together the combined strengths of Cambridge and Manchester to create something that is truly groundbreaking. By connecting our cities, we’re helping to build a more collaborative and dynamic environment in which innovative research can connect with industry, venture capital and entrepreneurs, to drive economic growth and deliver real benefits for people and places across the UK.”

The partnership – fronted by Innovate Cambridge and Unit M – will pilot new approaches for delivering inclusive growth, providing insights to other cities, the wider higher education sector community and local and national governments in the UK and internationally.

While collaboration in the UK has traditionally been focused on areas close to one another, like Manchester and Liverpool, or Edinburgh and Glasgow, the new model is described as “hyper-connected, place-to-place partnering”, as has been developed in the United States’ Northeast Corridor, Coastal California and China’s Greater Bay Area, bringing together complementary innovation capabilities to create “globally competitive connected ecosystems”.

Prof Duncan Ivison, president and vice-chancellor at the University of Manchester, said: "Our partnership with Cambridge marks a new model of collaboration between UK universities. It brings together the distinctive strengths of each of our universities and cities, connecting two of the great innovation ecosystems to scale up what we can achieve. This new approach to innovation accelerates the time between discovery and impact, getting ideas into the real economy and our communities even more quickly to drive inclusive growth.”

Jessica Corner, executive chair of Research England, said: “This investment underscores our commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration across England. By connecting the vibrant ecosystems of Cambridge and Manchester, we aim to drive significant economic growth and create a model for place-based innovation that can be replicated nationwide."

Aims for the partnership include:

- Ecosystem activation and integration
- Growing investment; and
- Testing and learning new approaches for delivering ecosystem collaboration and inclusive growth

Lord Vallance, the science minister and Oxford-Cambridge Growth Champion, said:

“This pioneering partnership is proof that our ambitions for the Oxford-Cambridge Corridor can and will fire up economic growth across the length and breadth of the UK, which is critical to our Plan for Change.

“Cambridgeshire and Greater Manchester are forging a path I hope others will follow. Science is always stronger when we work together, and stronger research ties between the UK’s great regions will only lead to more investment, more opportunities, and more breakthroughs, from health to clean energy and beyond.”

The funding, provided by the Research England Development Fund, is part of what the government describes as an £86billion package that will be announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the Spending Review on Wednesday (11 June), designed to promote the nation’s fastest-growing sectors, from tech and life sciences to advanced manufacturing and defence.

That comprises government spending on R&D over the next three years, reaching £22.5bn a year by 2029-30, to boost research and innovation into fields such as drug discovery, longer-lasting batteries and AI. This year, R&D spending was £20.4bn.

The government promised this R&D package would give local leaders government backing to develop ‘innovation clusters’ across the country to unlock talent and opportunity.

It will do this via a new Local Innovation Partnerships Fund, in which local leaders will be given the powers to decide how to target their research investment in the region and make the most of skill sets of the community, to promote high-skilled jobs as the government pushes for economic growth through its Plan for Change.

Ms Reeves, who is under pressure to deliver a Spending Review that bolsters employment, after previously imposing a National Insurance rise, said: “Britain is the home of science and technology. Through the Plan for Change, we are investing in Britain’s renewal to create jobs, protect our security against foreign threats and make working families better off.”

Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, added: “R&D is the very foundation of the breakthroughs that make our lives easier and healthier – from new medicines enabling us to live longer, more fulfilled lives to developments in AI giving us time back, from easing our train journeys through to creating the technology we need to protect our planet from climate change.

“Incredible and ambitious research goes on in every corner of our country, from Liverpool to Inverness, Swansea to Belfast, which is why empowering regions to harness local expertise and skills for all of our benefit is at the heart of this new funding – helping to deliver the economic growth at the centre of our Plan for Change.”

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology says every £1 invested in R&D generates up to £7 in benefits to the UK economy and leverages double in private investment in the long run.

Businesses that receive their first R&D grant funding typically see jobs and turnover go up by over 20 per cent in the following years, it reports.