Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how the Office for Investment plans to engage with local authorities and combined authorities to (a) identify and (b) promote investment opportunities.

We work with local and combined authorities to promote the most significant investment opportunities, by providing compelling products for use by the department’s UK and international teams.

With the expanded Office for Investment, we will build further on this approach, working in partnership, to turn the Industrial Strategy and regional growth plans into a clear, commercially attractive pipeline of investment opportunities. We are piloting an enhanced way of supporting transformational local projects, connecting them with specialist support or expertise from across government to develop opportunities at scale and with commercial credibility to pull in large scale investment.