Recommendation 26

HM Government · verbatim extract Rejected

Catapults are national capabilities, designed to support businesses across the UK to scale, translate R&D in new products and services, commercialise emerging technologies and strengthen the UK’s global competitiveness. Catapults operate across all parts of the UK, from the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s Operations & Maintenance Centre of Excellence in Grimsby, to the Compound Applications Semiconductor Catapult in Wales. Their presence locally helps generate high value jobs, develop skills, attract inward investment, while anchoring technology clusters. While their primary goal is not to drive regional economic development, they generate significant regional benefits through their operations, partnerships and impact on the skills base. We agree that Catapults can and should continue to do more to strengthen their regional impact. However, this must remain secondary to their core role as national capabilities for research and innovation translation to drive business creation and growth. To deliver impact, Catapults must be located where industrial capability, research excellence and market opportunity already exist. Establishing Catapults away from such strengths would reduce industry engagement and overall impact. Innovate UK’s Prospectus published in March 2026 confirms its commitment to embedding regional strengths across its programmes, including Catapults, and to ensuring that the benefits of innovation are felt across the UK in partnership with devolved nations, Mayoral Authorities and Local Innovation Partnerships. The government disagrees with the recommendation that removing the requirement for Catapults to raise private funding would enhance their impact in regions. The current funding model, combining core public grant with competitively won public R&D funding and private sector revenues, ensures Catapults remain responsive to both public policy priorities and real market demand. This balance prevents displacement of private activity and keeps Catapults focused on helping businesses scale, rather than competing with them. Removing private funding requirements risks making Catapults more reliant on public funding, weakening their engagement with businesses, and reducing industry pull, the very mechanism that drives commercial adoption, scaling of firms, and inward investment across regions. The existing model already provides the flexibility to adjust funding levels to reflect sector maturity, regional context, technology trends, and the availability of alternative funding sources such as collaborative R&D. Some of the catapults most successful at attracting private investment are in lower-productivity regions.