Strategy

Kent & Medway Economic Framework

The Kent & Medway Economic Framework was released in early 2024.

Developing our ambitions and key action areas involved extensive consultation with businesses and other partners, including the Kent and Medway Economic Partnership and its Business Advisory Board.

We live in an uncertain and dynamic world, and plans need to respond to events. This Framework is therefore a flexible statement of shared priorities. It will evolve over time, as new opportunities and challenges emerge, and delivery will take place through a range of partners.

Three overarching Objectives: supporting the development of an economy that is more “productive, sustainable and inclusive”. These are essentially statements of general desirable outcomes: they are not unique to Kent and Medway, but set out a direction of travel.

Introducing the five Ambitions

To help deliver our three Objectives, there are some key themes on which action should be focused over the next few years. We have called these the five ‘Ambitions’, and they seek to:

1. Enable innovative, productive and creative businesses
2. Widen opportunities and unlock talent
3. Secure resilient infrastructure for planned, sustainable growth
4. Place economic opportunity at the centre of community wellbeing and prosperity
5. Create diverse, distinctive and vibrant places

Please click here to read the Kent and Medway Economic Framework

Kent & Medway’s Local Growth Plan Evidence Base

The Government’s English Devolution White Paper sets out a major shift of power and funding from central government to local areas, centred on the creation of Local Growth Plans. These plans provide a long‑term, 10‑year strategic framework for economic growth, designed to reflect the unique strengths, opportunities, and challenges of each place. Where they exist, Local Growth Plans are intended to guide investment, align local priorities, and support collaboration between local and national government.

Although Kent and Medway are not currently required to produce a Local Growth Plan yet (as we are not a mayoral area), the Kent & Medway Economic Partnership (KMEP) has chosen to develop one proactively. This reflects the growing focus of national investment on areas with strong, evidence‑led growth strategies, and the need to clearly articulate Kent and Medway’s distinctive role in the UK economy. A Local Growth Plan will help strengthen engagement with government, support bids for competitive funding, provide a clear narrative for MPs, and demonstrate intent and focus to businesses and partners.

To underpin this work, KMEP commissioned independent analysis (provided by Metro Dynamics) to build a robust evidence base, analysing Kent & Medway’s strengths against the eight Industrial Strategy sectors (in phase one) and then focusing on four priority sectors where Kent and Medway play a nationally significant role (in phase two):

• agri‑food and agritech,
• ports, transport, and logistics,
• digital and technologies, and
• energy.

This evidence base draws on deep statistical data analysis and extensive engagement with businesses, universities, colleges and economic partners across the region.

The evidence base, available HERE, will now inform the development of the Kent & Medway Local Growth Plan and a focused investment pipeline of 4-10 priorities.