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Welcome to this latest edition of the Industrial Strategy Bulletin.
In this edition, we highlight events that have taken place to mark the first anniversary of the Industrial Strategy White Paper, updates on sector deals, and announcements including new funding for self-driving vehicles.
One year since the Industrial Strategy was published
Last Tuesday marked one year since our Industrial Strategy White Paper was published. To mark this anniversary, we will be having a day of engagement on and offline this Thursday.
Please support us by putting out supportive social media posts and content online, using #IndustrialStrategy. Keep an eye on @beisgovuk for announcements.
Last week we launched an interactive map of the UK profiling 100 businesses and projects that demonstrate our modern Industrial Strategy in action.
If you would like to receive our stakeholder toolkit, explaining how you can get involved in promoting our modern Industrial Strategy, please email stakeholders@beis.gov.uk.
Latest posts on the Industrial Strategy Blog
University College London's David Bogle, Pro-Vice-Provost of the university's Doctoral School, makes the case for postdoc researchers helping to boost the amount of innovation being done by businesses.
Collaboration and cross-sector working are at the heart of a new project between The Alan Turning Institute, HSBC and the Office for National Statistics which aims to help tackle the AI and Data Grand Challenge, writes Lukasz Szpruch.
Mike Flewitt, Chief Executive Officer of McLaren Automotive, writes about the recent opening of the new £50m McLaren Composites Technology Centre in Sheffield and how the UK is the right place for the company to do business.
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People in London and Edinburgh will soon be the first in the UK to experience self-driving vehicle services as part of three new public trials announced by Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark on a visit to Oxbotica, part of one of the winning consortia.
The projects will allow the public to ride autonomous buses on a 14-mile route across the Forth Bridge, as well as book self-driving taxis to travel around parts of London.
The projects were selected following a competitive process and will share a £25 million government grant through the fourth round of the Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Intelligent Mobility Fund.
Each pilot combines the strengths of leading names from business, technology and academia - including Jaguar Land Rover, Addison Lee, Fusion Processing, Oxbotica, and the universities of Nottingham and the West of England.
They support the government’s ambition to have self-driving vehicles on UK roads by 2021 through the modern Industrial Strategy – helping us tackle our Grand Challenge to put the UK at the forefront of the Future of Mobility.
Read more about this announcement.
 The University of Manchester hosted an Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges Summit last week, with Business Minister Richard Harrington and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham talking about the opportunities available to local areas.
The summit brought together academics, students, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, local business representatives and government, for roundtable discussions on each of the Grand Challenges, with a particular focus on the upcoming Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy.
Future summits and events will be publicised in this bulletin.
New research projects will investigate how businesses can make best use of artificial intelligence in insurance and law.
Law and insurance services are set to be modernised by artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to new research delivered through the modern Industrial Strategy.
AI will revolutionise customer experiences, speeding up processing times and helping customers get answers to queries more quickly.
Three new research projects will investigate how businesses can make best use of AI in insurance and law as well as analysing consumer attitudes to AI – helping us be at the forefront of the AI and data revolution
The projects have been backed by £3 million through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
Find out more about the winning projects.
 The government has signalled its intention to deliver a landmark sector deal for the UK tourism industry to attract more domestic and overseas visitors and help drive major economic growth.
Speaking to the Tourism Industry Council, made up of leading members of the tourism industry and government, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Jeremy Wright confirmed the government will begin negotiations with the sector on an ambitious sector deal that will benefit the whole country.
As part of this process, he has called upon the industry to respond with a renewed commitment to promote its offer throughout the year, not just in the peak summer months, and increase clear career paths.
The sector has been asked to look at the key themes of:
- Making tourism and hospitality a career for life
- Making the UK the most accessible tourism industry in the world
- Sharing industry data to identify growth opportunities in new and emerging markets
More information about this announcement.
 A massive £600 billion investment in our roads, hospitals and schools over the next ten years has been set out alongside proposals to harness modern technologies to build infrastructure in the most effective way.
The government’s National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline reveals the vast scale of public and private investment underway and expected by 2028.
It includes schemes announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond in his recent Budget, like the £28 billion national roads fund, as well as other flagship projects like East West Rail, upgrading the M6 to a smart motorway and Hornsea Project One – the largest offshore wind farm in the world.
To ensure maximum efficiency in building these projects, ministers are encouraging greater use of more modern approaches to construction. The government has committed to increasing use of these methods in public-funded projects and is asking for views on how to encourage greater use of these cutting-edge techniques.
These proposals will contribute to the government’s objectives as outlined in the Industrial Strategy, the Construction Sector Deal and the Transforming Infrastructure Performance programme
Read more about this announcement.
The Department for International Trade, TechUK and Space Florida will host an event next month to promote exporting space tech to the USA.
Whether your space-tech is in satellites, telecoms, life science, materials or an upstream and downstream technology provider; discover how you can expand in Florida and the USA in 2019.
Get bespoke free face-to-face advice and guidance from experts from Space Florida, sharing its expertise on the Florida State space ecosystem.
The event at Inmarsat in Old Street, East London, takes place on Thursday 6 December from 9am to 5pm. Sign up for tickets.
 The Institute for Industrial Strategy at King’s College London brought together more than 70 organisations to mark one year since the publication of the Industrial Strategy White Paper.
Chris White, the Institute’s director, introduced the session with Alex Williams, Head of Sector Deals at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who provided a keynote speech highlighting the Industrial Strategy’s journey so far.
There were panel discussions with expert insight covering the fundamental importance of the Industrial Strategy to the economy and Industry 4.0. Baroness Deborah Bull gave a keynote speech highlighting the contribution of the creative industries to the economy, and Professor Barbara Shollock stressed the crucial role that STEM skills play in delivering the Strategy.
More information about the King's College London Institute for Industrial Strategy.
 Colleges, schools and post-16 providers are being encouraged to have their say on how new T Levels are funded through a three month consultation.
T Levels will be the technical equivalent of A Levels combining classroom theory, practical learning and an industry placement. The first T Level courses in education and childcare, construction and digital will be taught in more than 50 further education and post-16 providers from September 2020.
A further 22 courses will be rolled-out from 2021 onwards covering sectors such as finance and accounting, engineering and manufacturing, and creative and design.
T Levels are being developed with the industries who will benefit from the skills these qualification will provide. We are working with more than 200 businesses, including Fujitsu, Skanska, and GlaxoSmithKline, to help design the course content to make sure young people taking T Levels are equipped with the knowledge and skills that employers value.
As outlined in our Industrial Strategy White Paper, we are putting technical education on the same footing as our academic system. T levels will be backed by over £500m annually by the time the programme is rolled out fully. This will ensure we can increase by over 50 per cent the number of hours training for 16-19 year-old T level students.
Read more about the consultation and find out how to take part in it.
The UK’s first carbon capture, usage and storage project could be operational from the mid 2020s under a government action plan.
Work will begin early next year to identify opportunities to transform the UK’s fossil fuel infrastructure for use in carbon capture and storage, diversifying the oil and gas sector.
More than 50 international leaders, chief executives of major energy companies, manufacturing businesses and finance firms gathered to discuss the next crucial steps for making cutting-edge carbon capture technology a reality.
Ahead of COP24, the government will show the UK’s continued leadership on tackling climate change by setting out an action plan to enable the development of the UK’s first CCUS project, commissioning from the mid 2020s. The overarching ambition is to roll out the technology at scale in the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently.
This work is part of our Industrial Strategy Grand Challenge to maximise the advantages for UK industry from the global shift to clean growth.
Read more about this announcement.
 A £9 million R&D programme between GE Renewable Energy and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult has been announced.
The programme will be implemented over the next four years to improve reliability, drive down operating costs and improve safety of offshore wind operations. The agreement will provide new digital and service solutions for operating and maintaining wind turbines remotely.
Supporting the collaboration, Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry confirmed the government has been working with industry on an Offshore Wind Sector Deal which will be published in due course.
Find out more about this announcement.
 New ‘hubs’ based at live construction sites will train up thousands of workers and help tackle skills shortages in the construction industry, Education Secretary Damian Hinds has announced.
Twenty six innovative partnerships across the country have won a share of the £22 million Construction Skills Fund to set up the new ‘hubs’ which will train more than 17,000 people to be job and site-ready by March 2020.
The winning projects, including Southwark Construction Skills Centre in South London and Liverpool Waters Construction Hub in the North West, have collectively committed to training up over 7,000 people into permanent jobs by the end of the programme.
All the ‘hubs’ will be based at live construction sites so trainees learn in a real-world construction environment and gain the practical skills they need to secure a rewarding career in construction.
This ambitious programme to drive adult learning and retraining forms a part of the modern Industrial Strategy and is a step forward in the government’s National Retraining Scheme.
Read more about this announcement and the winning projects.
Barclays Eagle Lab to open 'AvTech' specialists at Cranfield University
 A new innovation centre for aviation technology will open in December to help with advice and mentoring for SMEs to accelerate their business and access to world-class experts and facilities.
Barclays will launch an ‘AvTech’ Eagle Lab at Cranfield University, a co-working space for ambitious entrepreneurs to scale and grow, drawing on the University’s aerospace heritage stretching over 70 years
The Lab, located on the university campus, will include facilities to support rapid prototyping, product development and specialised AvTech equipment.
The announcement marks the first step in the university’s broader initiative to support start-ups and SMEs in the aviation industry, and follows from the Barclays launch earlier this year of a new £370m investment fund for small businesses in the Midlands.
Find out more about Barclays' Eagle Lab at Cranfield.
 A new project is using satellite data and a UK supercomputer to develop an early-warning system for farmers in Africa, that forecasts when pests or disease may strike and allows preventative action to be taken.
It is part of the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme which uses UK expertise to deliver innovative solutions to real world problems across the globe. The data for the project is analysed through the UK’s JASMIN supercomputer at RAL Space in Harwell.
This is a great example how the modern Industrial Strategy is bringing together the UK’s world-class research with business investment to develop technologies and industries of the future that benefit society, as well as our economy.
Read more about this announcement here.
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