Talking Investment: How Derby’s driving growth across the Trent Arc

Derby and the East Midlands enjoyed a highly productive UKREiiF last month, working together to showcase the region’s enormous potential for investment. Here, writing exclusively for the Invest in Derby e-shot, Claire Ward, Mayor of the East Midlands, explains how collaboration is helping to drive forward ambitious plans like the Trent Arc.

Last month at UKREiiF, there was a palpable sense that the East Midlands is entering a new phase of confidence, ambition and delivery.

Across conversations with investors, developers and partners one message came through clearly: the scale of the opportunity emerging across the East Midlands is beginning to capture national attention.

At the centre of that conversation is the Trent Arc – an urban regeneration corridor linking Derby and Nottingham.

This growth corridor brings together our greatest concentration of economic assets, regeneration opportunities and investment potential.

The Trent Arc is not simply a collection of individual sites. It is a coordinated vision for transformational growth that better connects the region’s cities through investment, infrastructure, innovation, and nature-led placemaking.

And the scale and coherence of the opportunity is what is making it so compelling to investors.

The Trent Arc brings together two city centres, three universities, three train stations, many sporting venues, the East Midlands Freeport and Infinity Park Investment Zone sites, green and blue spaces, alongside emerging proposals for a new town.

Collectively, the pipeline has the potential to deliver 30,000 homes, 40,000 jobs, and £2.4 billion in GVA.

But these numbers only tell part of the story. This isn’t just about numbers.

My aim is to deliver inclusive growth for communities.

We’re regenerating former industrial and power station sites while unlocking new residential neighbourhoods and commercial districts.

By aligning major low-carbon energy infrastructure with energy-intensive industries, we’re enabling businesses to invest, decarbonise and grow in the East Midlands with long-term certainty.

For Derby, the Trent Arc opportunity is particularly significant.

Derby’s strengths in advanced manufacturing, rail engineering, clean energy, and innovation make it a critical driver of the Arc’s long-term success.

The city’s economic heritage, combined with major regeneration opportunities and strategic connectivity, positions Derby at the heart of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape regional growth.

Importantly, Derby continues to demonstrate how sector-specific strengths can anchor wider regional transformation.

From proposals linked to Great British Railways HQ to the £10 million government investment into Team Derby, alongside advanced manufacturing and clean energy investment opportunities, Derby is helping to shape a growth narrative rooted in productivity, regeneration and future-focused industry.

At UKREiiF, there was considerable interest in how Derby is approaching this challenge differently – not through competition between places, but through collaboration.

The role of public-private partnership in turning the Trent Arc into a coherent, investable growth corridor cannot be overstated.

I am working with partners across local authorities, industry, infrastructure providers, and government bodies to provide the certainty investors need.

UKREiiF provided an important platform to showcase the momentum that is being built through collaboration.

Since I launched the East Midlands Vision for Growth last year, the Trent Arc proposition has matured significantly.

The conversations at UKREiiF reflected growing recognition that the East Midlands now offers not only scale, but readiness through a coordinated pipeline of investable opportunities supported by strong partnerships and clear strategic intent.

For Derby, this moment matters. The city has long been one of the UK’s great industrial and engineering centres.

Through the Trent Arc, Derby will play an even greater role: helping to drive a nationally significant growth corridor that delivers jobs, homes, innovation, and sustainable prosperity for generations to come.

The opportunity is real. The momentum is building. And increasingly, investors are recognising that the East Midlands, with Derby at the centre, is irresistible to investment and ready to deliver.