Financing smart urban infrastructure that works at scale
Aug 18, 2026 · 30 min · 7 segments
On this episode of Government's Future Frontiers, experts discuss fresh approaches to funding innovation, driving transformation in cities at scale.
Aug 18, 2026 · 30 min · 7 segments
On this episode of Government's Future Frontiers, experts discuss fresh approaches to funding innovation, driving transformation in cities at scale.
Jeff MerrittGuest
Bill EggersHostPhil SwanGuest
Well, I, I would wanna get back to that in a few minutes with, uh, with each of you because that has been such a sticking point, and we also have seen some big failures because the risk-reward incentive structures just didn't work over time.
Um, now, Phil, um, you have a, a big portfolio there, and you said Manchester, 2.9 million people.
Uh, you're the leader of the digital portfolio, and part of your mantra is doing digital differently.
I'd love to hear what you mean by taking a different approach and why it's important to do so.
I'd like to respond actually to this, to this 'cause I think it's a really relevant conversation.
So we've spent about 50 million on digital infrastructure at a city region level over the last five years.
And, um, and, and built out, uh, a dark fiber network to about 1,500 endpoints, public sector buildings and other buildings across the, the whole geography of Greater Manchester.
And we did that using, being s- quite creative about how we, we found funding to do that.
Now, we attracted some money from government to do that, and partly this was to push fiber out into areas of Greater Manchester which were really poorly served.
But we, we looked at our opex and our existing WAN spends across our wide area network spends across our different public sector organizations and, and basically brought that forward and capitalized it over a 30-year period, uh, which gave us enough money to be able to put up some, put up some funds to be able to invest at scale, to build out and get a right to use through a commercial partner over a 30-year period, a, a network that actually we got a lot more built than we thought we were gonna get, you know, setting up a procurement framework in the right way.
Because what we tend to find in a public sector context is we overbuild our infrastructure across, and all the councils, across fire services, across police, across transport.
We're layering up our wide area networks actually, so we've collapsed those down and collapsed the funding down to have a single infrastructure, digital infrastructure layer.
And on the back of that, we're doing all sorts of smart city activities and urban traffic control work and visualization of data flows into digital twins and, which we couldn't have done if we hadn't invested in the infrastructure in the right way.
We were able to draw down against some of our c- opex flows, some of that capital to invest in infrastructure, and that's kind of what we mean by doing digital differently.
We knew we had a connectivity issue across the city region, and it wasn't gonna get addressed by the market quick enough.
But actually it's cashed out for us too in terms of savings, and we also put a 20% weighting on social value in the procurement, and that's given us almost £6 million worth of credit to work on the issues around digital exclusion, which is a, is a real challenge for, a- across, as a society, uh, and enabled us to think differently about how we connect community centers and all sorts of other functions too.
So, but we have to do it collaboratively, and I think that's the thing, the secret sauce that we have in Greater Manchester.
We have a real willingness to get together and go, "You know what? We're gonna...
Well, I, I would wanna get back to that in a few minutes with, uh, with each of you because that has been such a sticking point, and we also have seen some big failures because the risk-reward incentive structures just didn't work over time.
Um, now, Phil, um, you have a, a big portfolio there, and you said Manchester, 2.9 million people.
Uh, you're the leader of the digital portfolio, and part of your mantra is doing digital differently.
I'd love to hear what you mean by taking a different approach and why it's important to do so.
I'd like to respond actually to this, to this 'cause I think it's a really relevant conversation.
So we've spent about 50 million on digital infrastructure at a city region level over the last five years.
And, um, and, and built out, uh, a dark fiber network to about 1,500 endpoints, public sector buildings and other buildings across the, the whole geography of Greater Manchester.
And we did that using, being s- quite creative about how we, we found funding to do that.
Now, we attracted some money from government to do that, and partly this was to push fiber out into areas of Greater Manchester which were really poorly served.
But we, we looked at our opex and our existing WAN spends across our wide area network spends across our different public sector organizations and, and basically brought that forward and capitalized it over a 30-year period, uh, which gave us enough money to be able to put up some, put up some funds to be able to invest at scale, to build out and get a right to use through a commercial partner over a 30-year period, a, a network that actually we got a lot more built than we thought we were gonna get, you know, setting up a procurement framework in the right way.
Because what we tend to find in a public sector context is we overbuild our infrastructure across, and all the councils, across fire services, across police, across transport.
We're layering up our wide area networks actually, so we've collapsed those down and collapsed the funding down to have a single infrastructure, digital infrastructure layer.
And on the back of that, we're doing all sorts of smart city activities and urban traffic control work and visualization of data flows into digital twins and, which we couldn't have done if we hadn't invested in the infrastructure in the right way.
We were able to draw down against some of our c- opex flows, some of that capital to invest in infrastructure, and that's kind of what we mean by doing digital differently.
We knew we had a connectivity issue across the city region, and it wasn't gonna get addressed by the market quick enough.
But actually it's cashed out for us too in terms of savings, and we also put a 20% weighting on social value in the procurement, and that's given us almost £6 million worth of credit to work on the issues around digital exclusion, which is a, is a real challenge for, a- across, as a society, uh, and enabled us to think differently about how we connect community centers and all sorts of other functions too.
So, but we have to do it collaboratively, and I think that's the thing, the secret sauce that we have in Greater Manchester.
We have a real willingness to get together and go, "You know what? We're gonna...
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