Public Policy

The Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) is the UK’s first place-based public research and innovation fund.

Frontier was commissioned by UK Research & Innovation to lead an evaluation of the fund, looking at design and delivery, impact, and value for money. 

What is the Strength in Places Fund?

SIPF is a £316 million competitive funding scheme managed by UK Research & Innovation. It’s funded from the UK’s Strategic Programmes budget, formerly the National Productivity Investment Fund. 

SIPF’s aim is to help areas of the UK build on existing strengths in research and innovation, to deliver benefits for their local economy. 

Funding awards have been made to 12 projects, in different parts of the country and covering a variety of sectors.  

The investments made by the scheme are contributing to the previous government’s target of increasing UK public R&D investment to £20 billion per year by 2024/25. 

Designing the evaluation

Frontier was commissioned to lead a comprehensive evaluation of SIPF, in collaboration with RAND Europe and know.consulting. 

The evaluation covers three aspects: 

1. Process evaluation. What is working well in the design and delivery of the Fund? What could be done better? 
2. Impact evaluation. What has SIPF achieved? What difference has a place-based focused made? 
3. Economic evaluation. What is the early evidence on value for money? 

The evaluation spans approximately five years and is being delivered in several phases. In Phase 1, Frontier led the development of an Evaluation Framework Report, recommending a theory-based, mixed-methods impact evaluation in line with Magenta Book best practice. This framework focuses on understanding the unique place-based nature of the SIPF and assessing impact across seven thematic areas. 

In Phase 2, the consortium delivered a Baseline Report, describing the state of things prior to SIPF. We’re now carrying out interim process and impact evaluations, with final evaluations to appear in 2026. 

Overcoming challenges

One of the main challenges so far has been how we consolidate insights at Fund level and synthesise them into a clear, overall view. 

To do this, we developed a robust evaluation framework with a well-tested theory of change, and established a clear counterfactual, to understand the impact of SIPF relative to the usual ‘excellence-only’ model of support. 

We have also overcome challenges of limited data by implementing a detailed data audit, including accessing securely held data at the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service. We complemented this by carrying out in-depth analysis of monitoring data from the 12 funded projects, which required a high degree of expertise, given the variance in quality and consistency of data. 

Our impact so far

So far, the evaluation project has delivered several benefits for UKRI: 

• Synthesising data across projects to provide UKRI with a comprehensive view of the early impact of the first wave of projects supported by the Fund. 

• Highlighting the limitations of public secondary data for place-based evaluations where little data is published both by sectoral and geographic breakdowns simultaneously. 

• Informing improvements in data collection processes and delivery mechanisms for the current Fund and future waves of projects that may be supported. 

• Contributing to the evolving understanding of place-based R&I funding and its potential to drive regional growth. 

Driving equitable economic growth

The ongoing evaluation of SIPF by Frontier and our partners is crucial for understanding and enhancing the effectiveness of place-based R&I funding. We anticipate that the insights gained will support the government in refining their approaches to regional innovation, contributing to more equitable economic growth across the UK. 

If you’re interested in finding more about how we explored these issues and how we helped our client, please contact media@frontier-economics.com or call +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.