Beyond devolution: What Yorkshire’s growing businesses really need to thrive

Andy Burnham is right to push hard on devolution. Greater regional control over spending, taxation and investment decisions is long overdue, and his instincts on integrated transport alone could transform how Northern economies function. But political momentum is not the same as structural change, and there is a specific, stubborn problem that no devolution settlement will automatically solve: the North’s scale-up gap.

This is the point at which promising businesses stall. They have survived the early stage, proven their concept, and are ready to grow. Then they hit a wall. And in the North, that wall is harder, higher and less well-publicised than it is anywhere else in the country.

It would be easy to frame this as a story about the North being starved of investment. The reality is more frustrating than that – the money exists. What is missing is the willingness to deploy it here, on the terms that scaling Northern businesses need.

Venture capital in the UK remains heavily concentrated in the Southeast, pulled by the gravitational force of perceived faster returns. Northern businesses, by contrast, often require what is sometimes called patient capital – investment over a longer horizon, from backers who understand that building something substantial in Leeds or Sheffield looks different to doing so in Shoreditch. That kind of investor relationship does not materialise through goodwill alone. It requires deliberate, structural effort to connect the right businesses with the right money.

Northern Gritstone has demonstrated that this is achievable in life sciences. The challenge now is to extend that thinking into digital, AI and other high-growth sectors where the North has genuine strengths but insufficient backing.

Part of the problem is visibility. Northern businesses are too often unknown to the investors who could fund their next stage of growth. Closing that gap requires more than individual effort or occasional showcase events. It demands regional infrastructure – consistent, well-resourced mechanisms that systematically put Northern founders in front of the capital they need.

The second barrier is more concrete, in every sense. Laboratory space in Leeds is critically short. Businesses reaching the point where they need dry labs, wet labs or specialist facilities are finding that the space simply does not exist at the scale or availability required. The consequence is not just inconvenience – companies are relocating to other regions, and in some cases other countries, precisely because they cannot access what they need at the moment that matters most.

This is an infrastructure failure with real economic consequences. It is also one that a well-designed devolution settlement, with genuine investment levers attached, could begin to address.

Yorkshire’s innovation economy is not uniform. Leeds and Sheffield represent world-class, globally competitive assets – Leeds ranking third in the UK for health tech funding, Sheffield home to one of the most respected advanced manufacturing parks anywhere in Europe. These are not emerging clusters to be nurtured tentatively. They are established strengths to be backed decisively.

The instinct to distribute investment evenly across a region is understandable but counterproductive. What actually works – as the transformation of Bilbao into a globally recognised innovation hub demonstrates – is targeted, confident investment in specific places and specific sectors. Not adequate provision everywhere, but genuine excellence somewhere.

For Yorkshire, that means doubling down on Leeds in health tech and Sheffield in advanced manufacturing, while ensuring that surrounding communities are deliberately connected to those hubs rather than left to watch from a distance.

The ambition is there. The assets are real. What Yorkshire’s scaling businesses need from any devolution settlement is not warm words about regional potential – it is patient capital, specialist infrastructure, and a policy framework focused enough to make a meaningful difference.

The North is ready to build something lasting. The question is whether this moment in politics will be bold enough to match it.