Freeports: What are they, what do we know, and what will we know?

In January 2020, the UK government formally announced its intention to create a number of Freeports across the UK, with the aim of promoting job creation and regeneration, boosting trade, investment and innovation, and supporting the 'levelling up' agenda. The Freeports offer various tax and customs reliefs, simplified import and export procedures, enhanced trade promotion, and additional support for innovation, increasing their attractiveness to both domestic and international businesses. They also benefit from an injection of seed capital from central government and the full local retention of business rates revenue from qualifying new development, in order to enable investment in complementary infrastructure and skills. This report aims to provide an accessible overview of the Freeports programme, looking at existing evidence on the potential impacts of the policy, and what we may learn about its actual impacts from future evaluation.