Rebalancing within regions: R&D investment is at last moving out of the Greater South East. What decides where it lands?

UK Research and Innovation now invests more outside the Greater South East than within it, for the first time. This discussion paper argues that the useful question has therefore moved: from how much research funding reaches the regions, to what a place-based fund rewards once it arrives. The evidence is a single case examined closely. The Liverpool City Region's first £30 million tranche of the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund went £23.7 million, or 79 per cent, to two projects led by one of its five higher education providers. The paper traces that outcome to two requirements in UKRI's published guidance: (1) an instruction not to disperse resources thinly, and (2) and a private-to-public leverage ratio, and asks what follows for the refreshed place funding policy due in 2026. This project holds the paper and a data pack that reproduces every quantitative claim in it.