By David Kidney
In July 2025, we were treated to something that has been quite rare in recent years – public policy announcements by the UK Government and the West Midlands Combined Authority impacting the life sciences sector that are helpfully in sync.
First, the Government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan was published. This in turn was the product of the Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, which picks out eight areas of the UK economy where businesses are to be the focus for public support. One of these eight areas is life sciences. The Strategy promised a sector plan for each of the eight areas, hence we now see the Life Sciences Sector Plan.
Then, within the month, the West Midlands Mayor, Richard Parker, launched the West Midlands Growth Plan at a very uplifting event at the University of Wolverhampton. Here again, we see specific areas of economic activity picked out for (regional) public support, and life sciences is one of the areas to be targeted.
What matters more than “warm words” of course is the action that follows. What action can we expect to witness in the West Midlands that will support the growth of our rising life sciences sector?
I’m using “life sciences” here as a catch-all for the HealthTech, MedTech and other life sciences-related industry on our patch.
The Life Sciences Sector Plan focuses on three core, interconnected pillars:
- Enabling World Class R&D.
- Making the UK an Outstanding Place in Which to Start, Grow, Scale, and Invest.
- Driving Health Innovation and NHS Reform.
There are promises of meaningful business partnerships, improved NHS procurement, streamlining regulation – music to the ears of business leaders. Such a lot of modern developments in HealthTech are digitally driven, so setting up a Health Data Research Service and slashing the set-up times of clinical trials will be significant.
What will be the funding to back these promises? There is a reminder of the earlier launch of the £520M Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund, and a commitment to enhance the UKRI and NIHR offers to BioTech and MedTech SMEs, an extra £4bn of British Business Bank support for life sciences businesses, 10-year R&D Budgets supporting “triple helix” partnerships of universities, businesses and Combined Authorities, and a new Local Innovation Partnerships Fund (LIPF).
At the Cluster, we are very focused on securing regional collaboration to maximise the West Midlands’ share of the last two of these: the R&D Budgets and LIPF. There is also an intriguing proposal for Regional Health Innovation Zones, and naturally, we are interested in seeing whether the West Midlands can achieve this status.
So how much alignment have I found in the West Midlands policy for life sciences as set out in the West Midlands Growth Plan?
Plans for strengthening inward investment and specialist regional business support chime well with the Government’s sector planning, where leveraging private investment alongside public funding is frequently emphasised. The success of the WM HealthTech Innovation Accelerator (WMHTIA) really hammers home this point: £50M of private sector investment on the back of public spending of £14.5M. With the confidence that this success brings, there is a shared ambition now for all the partners to intensify our region’s health innovation
across the region with seamless support across start-up, spin-out, scale-up and incoming HealthTech businesses.
There’s a determination to utilise the three sites of the West Midlands Investment Zone, especially the Birmingham Knowledge Quarter, which is focused on MedTech and advanced manufacturing, to set out our stall most appealingly. A stall all the more attractive now that the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus at Selly Oak is open for business. Critical to much of this will be ever-stronger collaboration across the NHS, academia and industry to unlock innovation and additional growth.
So often business leaders say they crave certainty and stability in public policy, a settled framework that will allow them to plan for the longer term. There are good reasons for looking at these two publications and concluding that the direction of travel is going to be consistent over the next few years.
