The government’s National Wealth Fund (NWF) says its investments have supported plans for more than 64,000 jobs across the United Kingdom, as it publishes its first impact report detailing activity since it was established in summer 2024.
In the report, titled Financing growth, powering change, the MWF says it has deployed £3.6bn in the past year through 22 new investments and committed a total of £7.5bn to 62 projects since 2021 (when it was the UK Infrastructure Bank). The NWF reports that its portfolio has helped mobilise a further £16.2bn of private sector investment.
The projects cited cover a broad geographic sweep and a mixture of sectors. Examples highlighted in the report include tin mining in Cornwall, port infrastructure near Inverness, flood defences in Wales and broadband roll-out in Northern Ireland. The fund says its investments support more than 64,000 jobs in total, of which about 21,900 are directly attributable to NWF financing.
Clean energy makes up the largest single portion of the portfolio, the NWF says. It reports that over half of its commitments – around £3.9bn – are directed at clean energy projects that will add about 6.3GW of capacity, which the fund states is enough to power roughly 4.5M homes. The NWF also reports backing for nascent technologies such as battery storage, semiconductors and hydrogen aviation, describing these as early-stage financing that helps “de-risk” scaling and attract private capital.
Other headline figures in the report include:
- £1.7bn invested in fibre broadband, which the fund says will connect more than 20M homes, with much of the work targeted at underserved or hard-to-reach areas
- Financing for more than 34,000 public electric vehicle charging points through investments in providers including Connected Kerb, Gridserve and Osprey
- Financial guarantees intended to support retrofitting up to 280,000 social homes in partnership with banks and housing finance organisations
- A term loan facility for the Sizewell C nuclear project, described as support for national infrastructure
The report also notes the NWF’s engagement with local authorities and regional mayors, claiming commercial and financial advice across about 70 engagements and direct funding of eight strategically important local projects.
The fund frames much of its activity as catalytic: it says almost a third of its portfolio covers early-stage financing and that this approach has helped unlock private investment totalling £16.2bn so far.
The NWF’s remit was expanded in March by the Chancellor to permit larger-scale deployment in projects seen as strategically important for the UK’s growth and clean energy targets. The report says Oliver Holbourn will take over leadership of the fund from 1 November and that the organisation intends to launch new products and deepen partnerships with combined mayoral authorities.
Independent commentators say government-owned investment vehicles can play a useful role filling gaps where private capital is reluctant to bear early-stage or complex project risks, but they warn the effectiveness of such funds depends on governance, transparency and the ability to attract follow-on private investment.
The NWF report sets out its early interventions and ambitions as it scales up activity, with further scrutiny likely as projects move from financing into delivery. You can read it in full here.
NWF interim CEO Ian Brown said: “Impact is a driving force behind our investment decisions as we lay the foundations for long-term growth, and it’s incredibly rewarding to start seeing that impact come to life as our portfolio matures. Looking back, we’ve helped develop cutting-edge skills and nascent technologies, created new jobs to boost local economies, and crowded in significant private capital to help scale the UK’s energy infrastructure. We’ve achieved a lot in a short time, but there’s much more to come as we continue to expand into new sectors.”
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