The challenge
Northumberland County Council's agreement with QTS Blackstone over a hyperscale data centre campus at Northumberland Energy Park created an opportunity to establish a Northumberland Growth Fund worth up to £110 million over ten years.
The council needed to turn this commitment into a working investment vehicle, one that could deploy grants, loans and equity instruments to drive jobs and growth across Northumberland, whilst meeting the standards expected of public money. That meant resolving how the fund should be structured, governed and managed, and how individual investment decisions would be made, priced and monitored.
How we helped
Our team ran a market analysis engaging regional and national investors, including the National Wealth Fund, Legal & General, and NorthStar Ventures, to test appetite and identify funding gaps.
We assessed five fund structures against the council's objectives and recommended an externally managed fund with an in-house oversight function, then designed the full governance framework, including the Limited Partnership structure, decision-making thresholds and assurance lines.
We built an investment process, pricing methodology and an Excel-based investment toolkit to help the council assess funding applications, alongside a monitoring and evaluation framework and an implementation roadmap to mobilisation.
The results
The council now has a clear, board-ready blueprint for launching the Northumberland Growth Fund (NGF): an agreed fund structure, a governance model that separates strategic oversight from day-to-day investment decisions, and the tools needed to appraise and monitor investments consistently.
The work sets a realistic path to Cabinet approval and fund manager procurement, with early successes grant programme designed to deliver visible impact while the fund mobilises.
Over the fund's ten-year life, Northumberland is positioned to use the fund to unlock jobs, employment sites and business investment across the county, backed by robust governance and public accountability.
About our team
This work was delivered by Grant Thornton's Complex Projects and Transactions team, which supports mainly public sector clients on business case development, financial appraisal and investment strategy for social and economic infrastructure. The engagement drew on the expertise of chartered accountants, economists and subsidy control specialists, together with local market insight from regional advisors and regulatory support from Grant Thornton’s financial services regulatory advisory practice. The team has advised other public bodies, including South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Sport England and the London Borough of Merton, on similar investment opportunities, fund strategies and governance frameworks, bringing that cross-sector experience to Northumberland's fund design.
