DunPort Capital Management: jobs, resilience, and real impact where it matters most
Why place matters
Across the UK, local authorities face a dual challenge: sustaining economic growth while ensuring social outcomes – better jobs, stronger communities, and improved public services. Traditional impact investing has often focused on large-scale infrastructure, renewable energy projects, or branded social programmes. These have their role, but they can feel distant from the daily realities of local economies.
The lower mid-market (LMM) – companies valued in the tens to low hundreds of millions, often founder-led, rooted in regions, and employing between 100 and 750 staff – represents an underutilised but powerful lever for place-based impact.
These businesses are the backbone of many towns and cities. They anchor supply chains, train apprentices, and provide stable employment. By investing in and partnering with them, local authorities can drive visible, durable change in their communities.
Jobs: the foundation of social impact
When it comes to impact, the most meaningful lever isn’t abstract ESG metrics – it’s employment.
• Quality jobs: LMM firms provide secure contracts, progression pathways, and safer workplaces when supported with the right investment.
• Mobility: Many LMM businesses are the first to offer management opportunities to frontline staff and returners, making them engines of upward mobility.
• Local retention: Unlike footloose corporates, these firms are deeply embedded in place. Their payrolls and purchasing directly support local economies.
For local authorities concerned with inclusive growth, the LMM is where social mobility happens – one apprenticeship completed, one frontline promotion, one family sustained by a steady wage.
Why the LMM is the right scale for change
Scale matters for impact. Large corporates are too slow and bureaucratic; start-ups too small and fragile. The LMM sits in the productive middle.
• Big enough: Investments in training, safety, or digitalisation create measurable improvements in job quality and business performance.
• Small enough: Change is fast. A shift pattern, a training partnership with a local FE college, or a new supplier charter can be rolled out in months, not years.
Operational upgrades are particularly effective in the LMM:
• Energy-efficient equipment that lowers costs while improving working conditions.
• Digital scheduling in care services, giving staff predictable hours and reducing churn.
• Safer ventilation in manufacturing plants, improving both productivity and wellbeing.
Each intervention delivers both a business return and a social dividend.
UK dynamics: where authorities can lead
In the UK, LMM firms are concentrated in business services, health and social care, technology-enabled services, and specialist manufacturing. These sectors overlap heavily with local authority priorities:
• Health and care: Responsible LMM providers can raise standards in stretched adult social care and community health when they commit to fair pay and rigorous safeguarding.
• Skills: Local apprenticeship systems and institutes of technology are ready-made partners for LMM firms scaling training programmes.
• Productivity uplift: Investors who bring capital and operational expertise can lift output without cutting headcount – a win for both growth and jobs.
By fostering partnerships between LMM firms, colleges, and community organisations, local authorities can hardwire job creation and skills investment into regional economies.
Place-based impact in practice
Consider a town with an ageing industrial base and limited new investment. A single LMM employer with 400 staff could be the difference between stability and decline. With targeted backing to modernise equipment, electrify processes, or reshore parts of the supply chain:
• High-value jobs are preserved.
• Apprenticeships are sustained.
• The local tax base is protected.
• Smaller suppliers benefit from longer contracts tied to quality and sustainability standards.
The effect compounds outward: stronger firms mean stronger families, schools, and communities.
Local authorities can amplify this by encouraging portfolio-wide initiatives:
• “Good jobs” playbooks: predictable scheduling, skills mapping, supervisor training.
• Procurement charters: on-time payments, local sourcing targets.
The same operational discipline investors seek – standardised processes, digital reporting – naturally aligns with higher job quality and better community outcomes.
Measuring what matters
Local authorities should encourage practical, dashboard-style measurement, not burdensome reporting. Typical indicators include:
• Job stability: net headcount, turnover, average tenure.
• Work quality: real pay progression, secure contracts, health and safety performance.
• Mobility & inclusion: frontline promotion rates, apprenticeship completions, diversity in first-line management.
• Skills investment: accredited training hours per employee.
• Local multiplier: spend with local suppliers, payment terms, community partnerships.
Crucially, metrics should be tied to governance and management incentives. What gets reviewed gets improved.
Why returns and impact align
There’s a misconception that “impact” dilutes returns. In reality, employment-centred impact can de-risk investment:
• Lower churn reduces recruitment and training costs.
• Better training means higher productivity and fewer errors.
• Safer workplaces reduce absenteeism and insurance costs.
• Communities back employers who back them – useful for planning approvals, procurement, and long-term political licence to operate.
At exit, buyers increasingly value organisational health and workforce resilience. A portfolio of firms with strong “good jobs” credentials is not just impactful – it’s more attractive to acquirers.
What local authorities can do
To harness this potential, local authorities can:
1. Champion materiality: Encourage investors to focus on two or three employment levers that matter locally – apprenticeships, health and safety, pay fairness.
2. Facilitate partnerships: Broker links between LMM firms, FE colleges, and community providers to strengthen talent pipelines.
3. Embed place into strategy: Align impact investments with local industrial strategies and levelling-up priorities, ensuring capital supports long-term regional renewal.
