Evaluating the impact of devolved Investment Funds

6th March 2017

A consortium including Cambridge Econometrics (CE), SQW and Steer Davies Gleave has been appointed to evaluate the impact of devolved Investment Funds in eleven areas of the UK over the coming five years.

Investment Funds

The Investment Funds are a key part of each of the areas City/Devolution/Local Growth Deal and provide funding which localities can use with a high degree of flexibility: it is for each locality to develop and appraise the projects that the Investment Fund will support. The Funds vary from £450m to £1.1bn, to be invested over the next 20-30 years.

Gateway Reviews

As part of giving localities maximum flexibility, but also ensuring value for money, each Investment Fund is subject to a five yearly Gateway Review. The contract awarded to CE and its partners is to provide an assessment of economic impact for each area’s investment to feed in to this Gateway process. This will be informed by a series of locally tailored monitoring and evaluation frameworks, which will then inform future data collection and analysis.