Share your big ideas

Dorset LEP is developing an Investment Prospectus for Dorset, an investment portfolio that will really make investors sit up and discover the opportunities Dorset has to offer.

We and our partners want to face the future with a clear vision of how to stretch the region’s economic ambition. We are building a 2030 vision where everyone living, working and studying in Dorset will be living better.

To ensure the Dorset Investment Prospectus has the best possible investment portfolio, we’re asking Dorset’s future-looking organisations to help us establish the big ideas that have the potential to become reality and really make a difference in the next 10 years.

We are looking for great investment ideas which may, or may not, require additional funds.  We are particularly interested in opportunities of at least £1 million total value (we are not capping an upper ceiling) and which align with our aims for Dorset and focus on:

• The Dorset Lifestyle
• Inspired thinking
• Naturally creative
• Enabling business
• A role model for recovery.

Dorset’s Investment Prospectus will set out an investment portfolio over the next 2 to 10 years to inspire confidence and growth in our economy, particularly from private investors.

Our attention needs to focus on both immediate responses to COVID-19 as well as longer term economic recovery, set in the context of an economic landscape shaped by the UK’s new global position, to secure a prosperous future for all with solutions that meets the challenges of climate change and our future health, head on.

We recognise that not everyone will have all the details fully refined in their investment plans, especially where they may be at a larger scale and into the medium/longer term. At this stage, we are interested in getting behind those opportunities that will have a transformative effect for people, businesses and places across Dorset. We want to find those ideas that are worth investing in, public or private, and realise a financial, economic, social and/or environmental return.

We welcome your ideas and invite businesses to complete our proforma to give us a better understanding of your investment opportunity.  Only those investments that have the potential to deliver transformational change and align fully with our objectives will be considered for inclusion in the Dorset Investment Prospectus – and potentially additional support for their development.  Information you provide will be used as a starting point with substantially more information required as investment ideas are taken forward.   

Find out more and complete the proforma at investindorset.com by 4 November.

As there is no 'save as you go' option on the form, we recommend that you draft your responses in Word (or similar) then copy to the online proforma when you are ready to submit. 

Please note: this is not a specific funding call, but rather part of a rolling initiative by Dorset LEP to support new investment opportunities across the region.  If you have a business idea that you need support for now – please go direct to our business growth hub, Dorset Gateway.