What Works Growth

Local opportunities in the Defence Industrial Strategy - What Works Growth In September the government published the Defence Industrial Strategy 2025. This is the last of eight sector plans in the national Industrial Strategy, alongside Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy…

In September the government published the last of eight sector plans in the industrial strategy, covering defence.

Our new blog gives suggestions for how places can think through support to local businesses in responding to these plans👇
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Understanding the drivers of productivity: Capital - What Works Growth The drivers of productivity include skills, capital, innovation, enterprise and competition, and land. This blog focuses on capital.

Capital is an important driver of productivity 📈

If businesses want to improve productivity, they might invest in new machinery to speed up production, or new software to tackle more complex and higher value tasks 💰

Read in full 👇
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Understanding the drivers of productivity: Skills  - What Works Growth This blog is the first in our new series on the drivers of productivity, including include skills, investment, innovatio and enterprise.

In the first blog in our new series we provide an overview of skills and local growth—looking at policy levers available, things to consider, and useful resources.

This is a great primer to understanding how skills affect local growth and productivity👇
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Can expanding airports help local growth take off? - What Works Growth August means airports, and now that air travel has rebounded from the lows during the Covid-19 pandemic to reach levels where globally there are more flights than ever, airports face bigger and…

With more flights than ever taking off from the UK, airport expansion is a hot topic ✈️

But what might expansion mean for local growth in the areas around airports? Our new blog discusses some of the issues to consider👇
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Multiplying the benefits of Local Growth Plans - What Works Growth Last month the government published new guidance for Mayoral Strategic Authorities on Local Growth Plans. These are a key foundation of the new Industrial Strategy and the government’s ambitions for d...

Local Growth Plans are a key part of the government’s growth strategy.

Devolution will need to generate jobs, investment and economic activity more than the sum of their parts – multipliers can help assess these wider benefits.

Read how in our new blog👇
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City Minutes: Enterprise Zones - Centre for Cities Chief Executive Andrew Carter is joined by Victoria Sutherland, Deputy Director of Evidence at the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth to discuss their recent rapid evidence review on…

Enterprise zones 🎙️🎧

Deputy Director of Evidence Victoria Sutherland features on @centreforcities.bsky.social podcast to discuss our recent rapid evidence review on Enterprise Zones.

Listen to the podcast👇

As the evidence on this topic is limited, we recommend using our local employment multiplier toolkit instead when appraising potential local multiplier effects 👇 buff.ly/x8WXHYT

One challenge is that most of the evidence comes from studies looking at stimulus spending or cuts in spending so it’s not clear whether the findings carry over to day-to-day spend.

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Usually, multipliers are based on theoretical models and assumptions. We take a different approach – looking at evidence from policy evaluations.

We find that changes in public spending can have multiplier effects at the local level but there is not always an effect.
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Multipliers capture the impact that a change in activity in one part of the economy has on other parts of the economy.

For example, changes in public spending will have multiplier effects if public sector workers spend some of their income in the local economy.

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🆕 Rapid evidence review: Local multiplier effects of changes in public spending

We’ve published a new briefing on the local multiplier effects of changes in public spending.

Read in full 👇
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The IS-8 might not be right for your place - What Works Growth Local economies are not all the same, and economic strategy should never be a cookie cutter approach.

📍The IS-8 might not be right for your place

Local economies are not all the same, and economic strategy should never be a cookie cutter approach.

Read the blog 👇

Linking Appraisal and Evaluation: Lessons for Smarter Public Spending - What Works Growth UK local and combined authorities are being asked not just to justify investments but to demonstrate their impact.

✍️ Linking Appraisal and Evaluation: Lessons for Smarter Public Spending

In this guest blog Jeffrey Matsu, Chief Economist at CIPFA, highlights the link between appraisal and evaluation.

Read now👇

How to evaluate – Ask for help - What Works Growth Evidence-based policy is at the heart of good practices in policymaking. Impact evaluation provides a key source of evidence to help understand what really works and we need more impact evaluation of…

Designing and carrying out impact evaluation can be intimidating for policymakers.

Don’t be afraid of asking for help and support at any step of the process.

Read our new blog on the ninth step to better evaluation - Ask for help 👇

📌Are we too harsh on enterprise zones?

"We’ve been sceptical about the value of these programmes but if central government chooses to use these approaches, it makes sense for local areas to bid."

Read our latest blog for more👇
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Our recent guest blog from Dr Max Nathan also summarises recent research on public sector relocation 👇
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❓What might this do for local economies?

Our evidence briefing outlines how local policymakers can think about this 👇https://buff.ly/aLrrS1O

📢 Government will move thousands of civil service roles out of London, including opening new offices in Manchester focused on digital innovation, and in Aberdeen focused on energy.

We’re working on an evaluation of the UK EZs (more on this later in the year).  We also need more evaluation of which (combinations of) policy levers are most effective, whether impacts vary across different types of area, and on cost-effectiveness. 
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We previously looked at this policy in 2016. Whilst the evidence available has grown substantially over the last 9 years, there are still lots of gaps.

It’s also important to consider the distributional impacts. As with many local growth policies, the benefits of EZs are often capitalised into property values, benefiting property owners over renters.

Policymakers should be clear about their goals. Evidence is mixed on whether local residents benefit so, if this is the goal, an alternative approach may be more effective.

This may be because tax credits and other incentives generally result in small percentage changes in business costs and therefore do not change behaviour. EZs may also lead to displacement – shifting activity around, rather than generating new activity.

Policymakers should be realistic about the likely impacts of EZs. Only half of studies looking at business outcomes and a third of studies looking at labour market outcomes find a positive effect, (similarly) for other outcomes.

These policies have not yet been evaluated, but EZ programmes in other countries have. We’ve recently published a review of 53 evaluations, with around three-quarters from the US 👇
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More recent freeports and investment zones announced by the UK government use many of the same policy levers as EZs.

Evidence topic: Area based initiatives - What Works Growth Original evidence reviews published in January 2016. Updated evidence review on enterprise zones published May 2025. Area based initiatives can have positive impacts on local growth outcomes, but…

In the 2010s, the UK government announced 48 Enterprise Zones (EZs) offering five-year rebates on business rates, simplified planning regulations, access to superfast broadband, and (in some cases) tax relief on plant and machinery investments.
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✍️Learning from what works: using the Government’s new evaluation registry

Recently, the Evaluation Task Force within the Cabinet Office launched the evaluation registry with info on over 1400 evaluations conducted across UK government.

Find out more👇
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Responding to major job losses toolkit - What Works Growth When faced with major job losses in a single area, how can local policy makers best support those left out of work? What kind of support is provided to workers affected by major job losses? Major job…

📢 Government passed emergency legislation over the weekend to prevent the shutdown of the steelworks.

But what can policymakers do when large job losses are unavoidable?

Out toolkit look at how local policy makers can best support those out of work👇

Want to know more?

Our Innovation Toolkit on supporting university spin-offs summarises the available empirical evidence on two key decisions that can affect the number and performance of university spin-offs 👇
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