Published: January 29th, 2026
Have your say: join the Marches Forward Partnership and share your views on the Local Innovation Partnership Fund (LIPF)
Businesses across the Marches region – including those in agri-tech, food, farming, land-based industries, and related sectors – are invited to join a Webex session with the Marches Forward Partnership. The purpose of the session is to hear directly from you about your needs and priorities, which will help shape our bid for the Local Innovation Partnership Fund (LIPF).
If the bid is successful, the LIPF could bring up to £20 million in innovation funding to the region. This money would support projects where businesses, universities, and local councils work together. It could be used for shared equipment, testing sites, and facilities that help businesses grow. We want your input to make sure this funding matches the real needs and strengths of agri-tech and resilient landscapes in the Marches.
In this Webex, our goal is to highlight the wide range of innovation taking place in the region, including the technologies and processes being developed, as well as the challenges and opportunities involved in expanding them. We aim to gather insights from regional businesses during this session to help us craft a credible, business-driven proposal that could attract significant funding and have a meaningful impact across the region.
e.g.
- Innovations your business is developing or trialling and any R&D delivery or investment you have made locally
- Existing or potential partnerships; for example any joint working with Harper Adams University, Hartpury College, suppliers, technology providers, processors.
- Understanding any physical constraints to your innovation focus; this could include capital, equipment, testing environments or laboratory or simulation facilities for example.
- Understanding any workforce constraints to your innovation focus; such as capabilities, presence of researchers and analysts, and capacity in the region.
- Practical pain points experienced in research or when scaling new technology.
- Ideas for how the LIPF funding could be deployed in the region to support the agri‑tech and food‑system cluster.
We will use your contributions to evidence demand, identify shared priorities and shape delivery partnerships in the LIPF bid. With quite a short timeframe to the bid submission, this Webex is diarised for:
We look forward to hearing from you and working with you on our LIPF Bid Submission.
