Autumn Budget 2025: What did we learn about collaborating on growth?

After much speculation around tax rises and spending cuts, the hugely anticipated Budget 2025 was finally revealed on Wednesday. As expected, many of the announcements were focused on changes to personal taxation, with limited changes to the government’s growth strategy.

This should not be seen as surprising. Many outside the government have called for a longer-term approach to provide stability for attracting global investment. The publication of the Industrial Strategy, the 10-year Infrastructure Strategy, the Defence Industrial Strategy, and the 10-year health plan earlier this year - provided just that: long-term roadmaps for planning and investment. It will now need a doubling down on commitment to delivery and meaningful collaboration across sectors to maintain a focus on these roadmaps.

The Budget reinforced that ‘…the government should play an active, enabling role in partnership with businesses to create the conditions for them to innovate, create good jobs, and grow’. Alongside the delivery of the government’s long-term strategies, five clear areas emerged where cross-sector collaboration will be essential in the year ahead.

• Public-Private Partnerships are back in business: There is the potential for a new era in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) coming. With fiscal constraints limiting public-sector investment, there is a need to find an alternative route. The Red Book announces 250 new Neighbourhood Health Centres, funded with both public and private capital to improve access to healthcare services. It may signal the start of a broader trend, ensuring public infrastructure delivers both public value and private-sector interest. There was also mention of utilising PPPs to support the decarbonisation of the public sector estate. All of this speaks to the need to establish new ways of working between leaders that enable these highly helpful forms of partnership to deliver infrastructure effectively.
• Place-based growth cannot be delivered alone: The announcements of the Regional Project Accelerators, delivered in partnership with Mayoral Strategic authorities, reinforce the importance of the North Growth Corridor alongside the Mayoral Growth Fund, highlighting how place-based collaboration can deliver growth across the UK. It reinforces the trend towards more regional and local collaboration as the solution to challenging growth forecasts. This means leaders across sectors must work together to identify and deliver place-based opportunities. This requires building trust, developing networks and creating genuine routes to collaboration for the regions and nations of the UK.
• Trisector collaboration on impact investing will be key: The recent launch of the Office for Impact Investing highlights an area where the public, private and civil society sectors will need to work together. Finding new approaches to partner with social and impact investors, purpose-led businesses, and philanthropists to support growth and bring capital to places across Britain will be vital. Doing this will not be straightforward; building understanding of impact investing and the opportunities it will bring will require ongoing cross-sector dialogue. Bridging cultures and understanding across sectors will require greater effort.
• Working together on transformation: As part of the Red Book, Government departments have been asked to find an additional £4.9bn in efficiency savings from 2028 onwards. Alongside this, productivity in the private sector remains a huge focus. Doing this collaboratively will be critical to ensure we benchmark across sectors, share lessons learnt and establish best practices. Delivering successful tech-enabled transformation has proved challenging in many areas; leaders working together on this agenda will need support to deliver it.
• Supply-side reform needs a partnership approach: With limited room for additional spending, this budget made it clear that getting supply-side reform right is critical to the growth agenda. Working in partnership on areas such as the Regulation Action Plan is a necessity; this means building understanding across sectors and taking a partnership approach to deliver change in how businesses and regulators work together.

In the coming months, WIG will continue to surface opportunities for cross-sector collaboration and provide a safe, trusted space for strategic dialogue, develop leadership capabilities, and highlight ‘what works’ to ensure we can seize opportunities for sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the UK.

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