Firms welcome the government’s decisive moves in the following areas:
- A sector plan for each of the named high-growth sectors (the ‘IS8’)
- Commitments to invest large amounts of capital
- Emphasis on stronger international partnerships
- Long-awaited progress on planning reform
- The push for regulatory efficiency
- Continued focus on skills across the workforce and economy
- Prioritisation of placed-based growth
Together, these moves signal that the government is serious about delivering on its promise of a more joined-up approach to investment, productivity and competitiveness.
Despite this progress, businesses across the economy have been clear: delivery needs to move faster.
CBI members have outlined some key concerns:
- New programmes and schemes are stuck in the design phase
- Infrastructure upgrades are slow
- Foundational sectors feel overlooked
- Friction in the innovation and investment system is holding back adoption, scale-up, and capital flow
The next phase of delivery must shift the Modern Industrial Strategy from promise to performance. The government can achieve this by:
- Tightening coherence and collaboration across government
- Unlocking private investment at pace
- Supporting the everyday economy
- Accelerating the delivery of critical infrastructure and skills
In many areas, the Modern Industrial Strategy is off to a good start. Businesses remain cautiously optimistic. What’s clear is that the government must prioritise earning industry’s trust, aligning all of government behind the industrial strategy, and relentless focus on delivery throughout 2026.
Read the full details including read-outs from the CBI Industrial Strategy Roadshow
For more information on the Industrial Strategy, please contact Mark Goldstone.
Early successes
Clear sector priorities
Advanced manufacturing, clean energy, life sciences, digital & tech, financial services, creative industries, defence, and professional services have delivered sector plans with clear ambitions.
Capital commitments
£6.6bn injection into the British Business Bank; major funding pledges for AI (£500m), quantum (£670m), supercomputing (£750m), energy cost reduction (£2bn), and life sciences manufacturing (£520m).
The UK’s skills and talent pipeline
Acknowledgement that access to skills will be vital to drive growth and £100m investment announced for Technical Excellence Colleges in construction and on the STEM, skills needed within the IS8 i.e. within engineering and digital sectors.
Alignment across wider policy
Planning reform
Identified within the Industrial Strategy as a key enabler to growth and vital to the delivery of the government’s 1.5m homes and 150 critical national infrastructure project ambitions.
The government has made good progress through amendments to the National Planning Policy Framework in 2024 with a further consultation currently underway which includes much welcomed proposed changes for energy upgrades and prioritisation of commercial development land use.
AI skills and workforce readiness
The Industrial Strategy’s delivery hinges on strengthening skills and talent. Government has made visible early progress in expanding practical AI capability across the workforce, including setting out an ambition to reach up to 10 million workers with foundational AI skills.
This reflects a growing recognition that AI adoption and productivity gains will depend not only on specialist expertise but on broader workforce confidence and applied skills across sectors. Businesses welcome this direction, with sustained rollout at pace and clear pathways for SMEs and foundational sectors now critical to translating ambition into economy-wide growth.
Procurement of innovation
The government has committed to appoint Procurement Innovation Champions in each department, launch an Innovation Marketplace, and has announced several Advance Market Commitments.
These initiatives should significantly improve innovative businesses' ability to engage with public procurement processes, while allowing government to deliver better public services.
Going further and faster
Delivery and alignment – emerging risks
Six months in, firms are signalling concern that delays and policy inconsistencies could undermine the Strategy’s ability to deliver.
Alongside timing risks, misalignment across government departments is creating friction in some areas. While some areas of policy development are well‑aligned with the missions, businesses note that in other areas, departmental approach or urgency is running counter to the Strategy’s objectives.
Technology adoption
The Strategy emphasises the importance of technology adoption and diffusion to drive productivity and growth, and the government has published its review into tech adoption, identifying the barriers to progress.
However, there has been little tangible progress on support for businesses across the economy struggling to adopt and use new technologies.
Foundational sectors and the everyday economy
Many firms feel the government is not yet on their side six months into the strategy, with sectors including retail, hospitality, construction, transport, and wider foundational sectors reporting that they have yet to see clear benefits.
While frontier sectors feature strongly in the strategy narrative, everyday economy businesses often feel peripheral to delivery - despite being central to productivity, place-based growth, and labour market resilience.
