Press Release
Grant Thornton UK response to the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy
23 Jun 2025
Grant Thornton UK response to the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy from Malcolm Gomersall, CEO Grant Thornton UK
"The publication of the Industrial Strategy is a welcome step forward in setting out a clear, long-term path for growth in the sectors that are powering our economy.
"The strategy and the Professional and Business Services plan reflect our own investment priorities for the future, such as increased tech and AI adoption, fostering a highly skilled workforce in areas such as cyber security, digital and net zero transition and growing our specialist capabilities which support the expansion of our clients into international markets. I welcome the clear intention that the wider sector deliver this strategy in partnership with the Government through the Professional and Business Services Council.
"As an employer of over 5,500 people in one UK’s fastest growing and most resilient sectors, our own journey and track record over recent years has been remarkable. To achieve our ambitious growth plans, we know that we need to continue investing in the future, which means ensuring our people have the right skills and tools for a new era of business."
Some of the ways that we’ve been investing, that align with the priorities from the 10-year plan, include:
Attracting and retaining highly skilled talent
Our business is powered by people, and so we want to ensure that our professionals, from entry level to Partner, not only have the right skills to support our clients today and tomorrow, but also that we recognise their contributions by giving them a greater stake in the future of our firm. Which is why, today, we announced details of our Employee Benefit Trust which enables many of our people below Partner grade to benefit from the firm’s long-term growth. This kind of reward is unmatched in our profession. We are the only firm of our size and scale to ringfence equity in an EBT so that our employees can benefit from the firm’s increased enterprise value – at no cost to them. It’s a game-changing reward programme for our industry.
Building tech skills and digital literacy
Earlier this year, we announced a groundbreaking £1 million investment in a cutting-edge business transformation programme with Data Literacy Academy, designed to empower our people to step into the future with a data-driven, digital mindset. Unlike traditional data training programmes that emphasise data analysis skills, this pioneering programme is designed to equip people with the ability to approach every opportunity and challenge through an innovative, data-driven digital perspective.
As part of our commitment to invest in skills for the future, we hired our first cohort of Digital Audit Trainees, who will gain qualifications in data and digital fields such as hands-on coding, innovative technologies (such as AI) and data analysis. These trainees, who join as part of our 2025 intake in September, will collaborate with auditors and technology specialists to help the Grant Thornton audit teams overcome client challenges using cutting-edge technology.
Investing in international operations
Our aspiration is to be the ‘go to’ adviser for UK mid-market companies seeking to expand overseas and overseas companies seeking to invest in the UK. The percentage of our client base with international operations is steadily growing and in the last year we’ve made a strategic investment in Grant Thornton Cyprus and continued to grow our relationship with Grant Thornton India.
Investing in services which support priority growth areas
- As part of our strategic commitment to supporting priority growth areas, we have made substantial investments in specialist cybersecurity services through our Cyber Defence Centre (CDC). The CDC has demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving a consistent annual growth rate of 60%. It is rapidly establishing itself as a benchmark for modern Incident Response (IR) and Managed Security Services (MSS), delivering high-value outcomes for clients across sectors. In recognition of its innovation and operational excellence, the CDC was recently named Europe’s Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) of the Year by CrowdStrike, a global leader in cybersecurity.
- In February we launched a new team to deliver our national Entrepreneurial and small and medium enterprises (SME) Services offering. The offering is designed to provide entrepreneurs and fast growth businesses across the UK with the support they need to grow and achieve their goals. Initially piloted in three offices in 2023, the team has now expanded to over 300 people across the UK, with a dedicated overseas team of 70 people.
- Our Defence Supplier Capability Development Programme (DSCDP) is aligned with and actively delivering on the ambitions outlined in the Strategic Defense Spending Review, which positioned defence as a key driver of economic growth. This exciting programme, funded by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), provides growing UK businesses supplying the defence sector with up to £200,000 of bespoke business improvement support. This support will be funded by the MOD, with companies being required to demonstrate matched resource commitment through the time they spend on improvement activities.
Building a lifelong learning culture
We have also recently announced a new Career Development Academy for our employees that are Assistant Manager through to Director level. Following extensive focus groups and consultation with our business, the programme will focus on five key pillars: confident leadership; sustainable performance; ambitious delivery; data and digital innovation; and growth mindset. We have also created Director and Partner Promotion Readiness programmes to help our people transition to leadership roles with our first partner cohort starting this month.
Investing in diverse talent
We know that, if we’re going to create a high-performance culture, our investment in people’s development needs to be tailored and responsive. If we try to take a ‘one size fits all’ approach to learning, some people will miss out on the skill enhancement, training and exposure to new ideas and networks that they need to excel in their roles. That’s what our new development programme for diverse talent, Catalyst, seeks to do. We’ve identified the potential barriers to progression for our under-represented talent and, from this, have developed a nine-module programme that can be tailored to individual needs. These will cover topics like building sustainable value propositions, leadership and confidence, plus managing energy and resilience.
