21 September 2026
Today, 24 organisations, including JustMoney Movement, have written to the government calling for the UK’s National Wealth Fund to be scaled up into a world-leading national development bank.
Delivering clean, affordable energy for all, revitalising our industrial heartlands, and ensuring a just transition for workers all requires sustained investment at a scale we have not seen for decades. This kind of renewable energy revolution is possible, and a scaled up National Wealth Fund is the key to unlock it.
People across the UK would benefit from a just transition, with cheaper bills, better jobs, stronger local economies, and greater energy security. The National Wealth Fund can play a critical role in making Britain’s economy work for all its people, instead of just the top 1%, by;
- Reindustrialising the heartlands and creating unionised, and fair-paid green jobs.
- Retrofit thousands of homes and buildings across the country, offering affordable, long-term financing and lowering energy bills.
- Give the public a bigger stake in critical infrastructure by taking partial ownership stakes in infrastructure projects, ensuring the public has more control and shares in the financial returns.
- Support a network of regional banks: to channel money into communities and small businesses that provide the backbone of our regional economies.
The National Wealth Fund is already playing an important role in delivering these ambitions. It is steering private investment to support clean energy, modern infrastructure, and regional growth – for example through its £500m partnership with the Manchester Good Growth Fund.
But public banks like the National Wealth Fund have the potential to be doing so much more. Currently, the National Wealth Fund could invest up to £5.5 billion a year over the next five years. Germany’s public investment bank, KfW, lent €62 billion (£53.5 billion) to households, businesses, and municipalities in 2025 alone. This is what scaled up national development banks are capable of, realising the full economic, social and energy ambitions of a just transition.
The solution here is simple. The UK government needs to give the National Wealth Fund the independence to raise its own finance and invest over the long term, as comparable institutions do internationally. By leveraging its balance sheet to steer private capital, the Fund could mobilise far more investment than public spending alone, and do so consistently with the Government’s fiscal rules.
A scaled-up National Wealth Fund combines fiscal credibility with economic ambition: visible investment, good jobs, stronger local economies, clean energy and lower bills. So what is the government waiting for?