Maturing Approach to Investment: Accelerating our Ambition - Investment Approach Report
West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (WEMCA) wanted to explore how it might move away from its current investment approach of largely providing one-way grants and contract payments where no financial return is expected, to a more balanced approach where a proportion of investment activity generates additional resources for the Authority and/or leverages greater external investment into the region.
The new approach would look to invest in key areas that address and accelerate the Mayoral Combined Authority’s wider objectives, complement the existing finance and funding eco-system, and could generate additional sources of investment into the region through attracting co-investment, facilitating new partnerships and creating returns for re-investment.
31ten was commissioned to support WEMCA to provide advice on commercialising investment opportunities and in determining how it might implement a future approach of further local investment, generating returns for the Authority that can be recycled to meet strategic aspirations and core priorities.
The Role
Utilising our specialist public sector finance expertise, we deployed an experienced team to support WEMCA in exploring the opportunities available to them in maturing their approach to investment. Our role involved working in close collaboration with the client to test and develop our proposals, including:
- Desktop research to collate relevant and comparable examples of other public sector investment approaches;
- Developing the objectives and options available for WEMCA through a ‘check and challenge’ workshop approach;
- Testing the risk appetite for the type of investments and interventions that WEMCA may make under a new approach;
- Developing and testing governance and management arrangements needed to be put in place to deliver, manage and monitor the new approach.
Our work was completed in two stages:
- Stage 1 – Proof of concept; collating examples of other public sector and Combined Authorities investment approaches, determining the aims and objectives of any future approach, collating mapping the typical tools and types of investment that may be required to address strategic priorities and market need, developing the procedural and governance arrangements required for such an approach alongside the legal framework and wider considerations;
- Stage 2 – Ambition Report; developing a final set of proposals across three sections:
- A statement of ambition – what the MCA is aiming to achieve and why a change in approach is beneficial;
- Opportunity – Capturing case study examples and understanding the current regional context and areas of need;
- Framework – the controls and governance framework required to support robust and effective investment decision-making.
Key Outcomes
Our final Ambition Report was approved by the Committee and is being used to develop a new framework and Investment Strategy that supports the delivery of the Regional Strategy priorities.
