Purpose

Lancashire’s cyber ecosystem has seen
encouraging growth and increasing national attention in recent
years, with a strong foundation now in place thanks to coordinated
efforts by Lancashire County Council and regional partners.

As the ecosystem matures support needs to become more tailored,
strategic, and
differentiated to maintain momentum and meet the needs of a growing
ecosystem. This support should address delivery gaps, reduce
duplication, and create clear pathways for innovation, skills
development, business scaling, and investment.

Above all, it must ensure that the ecosystem functions as a
platform for long-term economic resilience and national
competitiveness.

From March to June 2025, LCC, in collaboration with regional
partners, hosted a series of in-depth workshops with SMEs and key
stakeholders within the cyber security supply chain.

The objective to develop a comprehensive understanding of how
Lancashire County Council can best position itself to capitalise on
the transformative opportunities presented by the National Cyber
Force (NCF). As part of this effort, our partners conducted a
number of one-one interviews and facilitated six roundtable
sessions with over 100 attendees across the events these
engagements surfaced a number of valuable insights, with
stakeholders consistently highlighting four priority themes:

• Ecosystem Investment
• Skills Alignment
• Cyber Hygiene
• Procurement Support

In addition to these core themes, the roundtable discussions also
revealed broader systemic challenges. These include concerns around
UK cyber sovereignty, technological obsolescence, and the
complexities of integrating evolving compliance standards.

Overall vision: How do we create a unified, accessible, and
resilient Lancashire cyber ecosystem that lowers barriers to entry,
strengthens SME collaboration, embeds cyber excellence, and ensures
local businesses are procurement-ready—so that the arrival of
NCF delivers long-term, inclusive economic growth across the
county, not just for primes but for all.
omic growth across the county, not just for primes but for
all.

Content

Vanessa Robinson-Hoy, Senior
Project Officer, on behalf of Simon Lawrence, Director of Growth and Regeneration, took
a decision to initiate a mini competition for cyber hygiene work
package (3 quote process).