Your web browser is out of date. Update your browser for more security, speed and the best experience on this site.
View across bristol
Image credit: B&NES
Strategic framework

Vision for 2040

By 2040, the West of England will have a world renowned green economy that is creating new jobs for residents; the region will be more equal with all residents having access to good homes, opportunities, and services; and the region will be more prosperous, with a healthier and happier population driving the region’s success.

There is a great deal to accomplish in achieving our vision for 2040. With long-term flexible funding, the right mix of devolved powers, and strong local, national, and international partnerships, we are confident in our future and our ability to deliver for the region.

Our strategic framework →

Bristol harbour from above Image credit: Anna Barclay & Freia Turland

The region's strengths and challenges

The West of England boasts a high-skilled workforce, a strong green economy, and a vibrant cultural scene, but faces challenges in housing affordability, transport connectivity, and climate resilience.

Discover the evidence behind our strategy

What we'll do to

Create a better connected region

  • We will join up our public transport network to meet the growing needs of our region by linking up bus, rail, walking, and cycling to enable seamless trips and easy interchange between different travel options. The region needs a modern transport system to help people get around, access jobs, and reduce reliance on cars. Working with Government and other partners, we will deliver this as part of our integrated transport network.
  • We will deliver transport options that meet the needs of different communities across our diverse region, including through electrification and expansion of our growing local rail network, and systems like WESTlink that respond to the needs of rural communities.
  • We will deliver integrated ticketing and improved digital information to make it easier for residents to travel across the network on a single ticket.
  • We will improve walking, wheeling, and cycling infrastructure so travel by cycling and walking is an easy and safe option for more journeys around our region. We will build more segregated cycle routes and integrate cycling into our regional transport interchanges, making it a convenient choice as people travel across the region.
  • We will deliver more frequent train services, open new train stations, and reopen rail lines. By reopening the Portishead line and implementing our new rail station programme, rail is becoming a primary way to travel across the region. We will also work to electrify more of the network. Building on this, we will grow suburban rail in line with our modern transport system planning, creating a sustainable and integrated transport network fit for the future.
  • We will improve bus services through our enhanced partnership and by exploring franchising. Many people across the region are calling for franchising, and we will work with the new Government to explore how this could work effectively in our region as part of a broader transformation of our transport system.
  • We will take action to dramatically reduce car use. Congestion and unreliable transport systems cost the region £300 million a year. We will work with our communities to reduce car use where feasible and increase the use of improved public transport, cycling, and walking. We will also consider measures to reduce car use where alternative transport options are unavailable.
  • We will increase the availability of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging. Where car use is necessary, we aim to minimise its environmental impact. Working with the new Government and local partners, we will scale up EV charging at pace.
  • We will embrace new technology to provide people with diverse travel options. We will continue testing new travel solutions to ensure that people across the region have options that meet their needs. We understand that these needs differ in urban and rural areas and will work with communities to explore the technologies that are most suitable for each.
What we'll do to

Deliver net zero and nature recovery

  • We will significantly scale up good quality retrofit, building on our successful RETROFIT West programme to grow the workforce and funding needed to deliver on our retrofit ambitions—making more homes across the region warm, energy efficient, and cheaper to run for residents.
  • We will grow renewable energies, including tidal energy, solar, wind, and new innovations like heat from mines. We will continue to work with residents and businesses to generate renewable energy through wind and solar as much as possible. We will also work with our industries to support innovation and trial new energy forms in the right settings—such as the use of hydrogen in transport, the potential of tidal energy, and heat from mines.
  • We will dramatically reduce emissions from transport, including decreasing the number of car and freight trips. Our transport and environmental ambitions will be fully integrated into the services we provide, supporting our innovative capability to explore zero-emissions transport options.
  • We will create new natural spaces and restore existing places, improving health and wellbeing. Nature and wildlife are vital to the health of our places and our people. We will build nature into new developments and ensure redevelopment and new schemes have a focus on nature recovery, developing an assessment that values health and nature in how we invest.
  • We will support species recovery and become the UK pollinator capital. Pollinators play an important role in the health of our places, and we will continue to support their protection and recovery across the West of England.
  • We will engage people, businesses, and landowners to help nature recover and improve climate resilience. The scale of the challenge in restoring our natural spaces and waterways is vast, and we cannot do it alone. We need the support of residents, businesses, and local landowners to deliver transformational change that benefits all. We will put the partnerships, investment, and systems in place to support this collective effort.
  • We will deliver climate adaptation actions like flood defences and cooling urban areas. While we will take action to reduce climate change, we must also respond to the changes we see. We will build the investment required to support measures like flood defences to keep our communities safe.
  • We will help people, communities, businesses, and landowners be resilient. Recognising that climate resilience cannot be achieved alone, we will build the partnerships, investment models, and evidence needed to adapt to our changing world—working together to protect our places.
  • We will green our urban areas and use nature-based solutions to improve our resilience. We will work with developers to ensure the West of England continues to lead in environmental adaptation, integrating assessments into our investments and using innovative approaches to build enduring infrastructure that aligns with the current climate changes we face.
What we'll do to

Create the jobs and training our region needs

  • We will support the region’s young people to be career ready by prioritising investment in careers advice, working with schools, colleges, and employers across the region to ensure young people have quality guidance on the opportunities available. This will help maintain a diverse talent pipeline to meet the region's skills needs.
  • We will develop clear and inclusive cradle-to-career pathways, offering children careers advice earlier to broaden their understanding of future job possibilities and supporting children (and their parents) in their earliest years to improve life chances.
  • We will ensure more disadvantaged young people access the region’s high-skill jobs by collaborating with partners, providers, and employers to engage more young people experiencing disadvantage in education, employment, and training. This will include promoting learning opportunities aligned with regional skill needs.
  • To grow our region’s economy, we will develop the region’s workforce, supporting people to train and retrain helping residents, at all stages of their careers, have the skills employers in the region require. We will evolve adult skills training programmes, working with employers to build a green skilled workforce to deliver our green economy. We will invest in scaling up digital skills provision and support growth in new sectors.
  • We will build a stronger foundational economy - this is the part of the economy that provides essential goods and services (i.e. health, social care and education), ensuring the effective functioning of the region. We will prioritise growing secure careers in these sectors, where people can progress and we will develop the skills and training to help them do so as well as taking action to improve productivity, drive innovation and enhance working conditions in this vital part of our economy.
  • We will support more businesses across the region to start, grow and create jobs. While continuing to support all businesses in the region, we will focus our business support on helping business adapt to the green economy and develop their digital capabilities as well as placing renewed focus on business with high growth potential to help drive regional productivity.
  • We will set up a West of England integrated employment and skills system to support people in developing their careers. Building on our successful Skills Connect service, we will expand provision to ensure employment support aligns with regional priorities, is easier to navigate, and leads people to good job opportunities.
  • We will get more people into good quality work by supporting them to develop the skills needed to enter or progress into the good jobs at the heart of the region’s evolving economy.
  • We will continue to drive up employment standards in the region, helping employers enhance their practices in recruiting, supporting, and retaining staff.
  • We will sustain a healthy workforce and support people with ill health into or towards work. Recognising a healthy population as central to economic growth, we will work with the health sector to integrate health services with employment and skills services as a pathway to tackling inequality in our region.
What we'll do to

Support sustainable communities that people are proud to call home

  • We will speed up the delivery of affordable homes to meet local need in the right places. Bath is the third least affordable city in the UK and Bristol is the country’s most expensive city for people who live alone outside of London. Addressing the housing crisis is not something the region can do alone. We will work with Government and local partners to remove barriers to building new secure and affordable homes so that no one is locked out of pursuing new jobs and opportunities by high housing costs.
  • We will deliver transformational mixed-use developments that put place-making, affordable housing and connectivity at their core. Building off our Placemaking Charter, we will work with our communities and local partners to create distinct, walkable and convenient neighbourhoods, including facilitating new housing.
  • We will ensure that everyone has a suitable, stable and secure place to live by tackling poor rental conditions, homelessness and temporary accommodation.
  • We will invest in city and town centres and high streets to create attractive spaces that meet communities’ changing needs. We will work with local communities, partners and developers to ensure our local places continue to meet the needs of our residents and visitors.
  • We will ensure our day and night-time economies are adaptable, vibrant, safe and welcoming. We will support the transition to more leisure and cultural options, while retaining retail and key services in our city and town centres. This mix of activity supports jobs, adds vitality, often stays open around the clock and offers a safe, attractive and welcoming environment.
  • We will deliver places that are compact, easy to get around, encourage flexible uses and are accessible. Great places come in all shapes and sizes, but the most successful places are easy to navigate and connect into the wider region, reducing our environmental footprint. We’ll invest to keep developing places that fit this sustainable model.
  • We will provide our communities with world-class digital infrastructure. Digital connectivity is a must for our communities, but location is still a barrier to accessing good broadband. By delivering the actions in our regional Digital Strategy, we will make sure more people can get online and have good quality superfast digital services.
  • We will deliver local plans that set a long-term direction for new housing and employment sites. To ensure our towns, cities and communities continue to meet the needs of local people and employers, we will make sure future development sites are clearly identified and strategically linked to infrastructure planning for the region.
  • We will plan and invest in the social infrastructure that supports people’s quality of life. Sustainable places are not just bricks and mortar; strong communities also build social connections. We will work with national and local partners to develop childcare services, schools, health hubs, integrated community services, youth services and much more – the fabric of great places to live.
What we'll do to

Put the West of England on the map for national and global success

  • We will help more businesses innovate and grow, ensuring more people are able to access exciting opportunities. Across our economy, with the right support, businesses are evolving, becoming part of our growing green economy and creating new jobs and opportunities. By 2040, our region will be known as a green business capital.
  • We will increase the proportion of national research and development spend in the region. The region hosts world-leading research and innovation institutions and assets. We will work with Government and investors to bring more funding to the region, enabling greater discoveries and improving residents' lives and productivity.
  • We will turn more of our innovative ideas into commercial ventures. Our world-class universities and start-ups are brimming with ideas that can help deliver our regional priorities. We will implement a scale-up network, build supply chains, and production and distribution capacity - the conditions needed to grow good ideas into world-changing companies.
  • We will raise the profile of our region’s strengths and the opportunities on offer for investors, supporting our big sectors to grow and helping emerging sectors of our economy to scale up and flourish. We will work with our universities and industry partners to ensure national and international investors understand our strengths and that we are a national and global destination for enterprise.
  • We will bring more investment into the region and enhance our international trade links. We will develop a growth plan and investment prospectus to bring even more long-term investment and good jobs to our region - further increasing our contribution to national economic growth.
  • We will capitalise on our unique sector and technology strengths to help deliver a green economy. The West of England is a world leader in Advanced materials, manufacturing and clean tech; Digital technologies - quantum, AI and cyber security; Creative and immersive technology; and Health and life sciences. We will put our green economy squarely on the map as a place to invest and grow.
  • We will develop and sustain our world-class cultural and creative industries and assets. Part of what makes the region an attractive investment opportunity and visitor location are the amazing places and creative industries located here. We will help our thriving film, TV, and wider cultural sector to continue to grow.
  • We will embrace the opportunities our international communities bring to our culture, economy, and education. Our region is full of diverse communities, experiences, and international links. We will ensure that as the region evolves, we continue to strengthen our links with the world.
  • We will bring about a healthier and happier population by growing participation in culture and sport. A vibrant economy is driven by healthy and happy people. Culture, sport, and access to green space are vital to our future happiness and productivity. We will work with health partners, the cultural sectors, sports teams, and facilities to give residents access to amazing assets that help improve their health and wellbeing.
People working with robots Image credit: National Composites Centre Innovation Plan
Carnival scene Cultural Compact

This plan aligns with the direction set out in the Bath and North East Somerset Economic Strategy, the South Gloucestershire Council Plan and the forthcoming Bristol City Council Economic Strategy. It also aligns with the plans of the two Integrated Care Partnerships operating in our region, supporting their long-term goals to improve health and wellbeing across the West of England.

The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority will be guided by the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority Committee in delivering this plan, working closely with partners and engaging with people across our region. Learn more about next steps in the PDF version of the Strategic Framework (pdf, 1.7mb).

Bristol harbour from above Image credit: Anna Barclay & Freia Turland

Expected outcomes

To deliver our vision for the West of England in 2040, partners have identified three clear outcomes that together we will work to achieve. These outcomes are supported by specific improvements that will help us track our progress.

  • A greener West of England: Net zero carbon, with resilient natural environments, and significant green spaces and waterways.
  • A more equal, fair, and inclusive region: All residents will share in the region’s success, with access to homes, jobs, and services that improve quality of life.
  • A prosperous region: Rising incomes and standards of living, with a sustainably growing economy that brings thriving high streets, better connectivity, and green jobs across sectors.

The annex to the downloadable plan (pdf 1.2mb) demonstrates how our actions contribute to the outcomes we are committed to delivering for the West of England.

Our plans and strategies will continue to develop over time to meet the ambition set out in the framework.