The White Paper "Industrial Strategy: building a Britain fit for the future" outlines plans for strategic government intervention in the growth and development of the UK economy. For the first time, 'place' is explicitly identified as pillar foundation.

This policy brief provides views from experts in regional economic studies on units of place identified in the White Paper; from the macro-units of devolved administrations, through meso-level units of the Midlands Engine, the combined authorities and local enterprise partnerships and to micro-, firm-level defined notions of place. Common to the contributions is a frustration that there seems to be little beyond the usual rhetoric to bring about truly devolved powers to more local geographies despite the increasingly complex layering of devolved units of place. It makes recommendations to policymakers to put 'place' at the heart of UK placed-based industrial strategy.