Turning investment into opportunity for people and places
- Thursday, July 2, 2026
- Posted By The Growth Company
What does inclusive and sustainable growth mean in practice? For Donna Edwards, Managing Director of Business Support and Business Finance at The Growth Company (GC), it means making sure economic growth creates real opportunity for people, businesses and places.
In a short video shared on LinkedIn, Donna reflects on what good growth means to her. Here Donna builds on that message, exploring how GC helps turn investment into business growth, employment pathways and lasting local impact.
At GC, our purpose is to enable growth, create jobs and improve lives. It's what we've been doing for the last 35 years. Whether we are supporting entrepreneurs, helping manufacturers innovate, connecting people to employment, or attracting investment into Greater Manchester, the goal is the same: growth that creates opportunity, reaches all communities and lasts.
Places do not grow on their own. They grow because people and businesses succeed. An investment decision may be the starting point, but the real test is whether that investment translates into better outcomes for local communities.
That means connecting the dots between inward investment, business support, skills, employment and community benefit. This is about making that connection practical, visible and deliverable.
Metroline is a clear example of this approach in action. Metroline’s expansion in Greater Manchester created an opportunity to connect investment with local recruitment, skills and community benefit. From the outset, the focus was on making sure that investment created wider value for local people.
GC brought together the right support at the right time, from initial inquiry to bringing our employment team in at bid stage to support social value commitments and recruitment planning. Once the contract was secured, employment and skills teams worked alongside Metroline to develop recruitment pathways, community engagement and a training academy.
The result was investment translated into local opportunity: 40 unemployed residents were trained, with 20 progressing into bus driver roles. That creates a direct link between economic investment and improved life chances - and shows what inclusive and sustainable growth can look like on the ground.
Inclusive growth relies on effective partnership between public, private and voluntary sector partners. It starts with shared outcomes: more good jobs, better skills, stronger businesses, healthier communities and more sustainable growth.
Businesses rarely think in terms of funding pots, programmes or public sector structures. They need talent, finance, innovation, planning support and routes to market. The easier we make it for businesses to interact with the ecosystem, the greater the impact we can deliver together.
One of GC’s biggest roles is convening: bringing the right people together around a shared purpose. We sit at the intersection of local government, business, education, communities, investors and delivery partners. That means we can help turn individual interventions into connected solutions.
Over the past three years, that connected approach has helped GC support 76,001 business engagements, generate £831m in GVA growth, secure 188 inward investment projects, create, safeguard or fill 29,870 employment opportunities, and support 48,338 people to positively progress.
But the real story behind those numbers is about people, businesses and places moving forward together. When we come together around a shared purpose, we create something more powerful than growth alone: opportunity, confidence and long-term impact.
Good growth is about making sure investment reaches people and communities. At GC, that means using our role, relationships and expertise to help unlock potential, create opportunity and deliver long-term economic and social impact across Greater Manchester and beyond.