University Partnerships Programme (UPP)

Lodestone combined public affairs, policy engagement and collaboration with business groups to gain special tax relief against OECD led tax changes for University Partnerships Programme as part of the Finance Bill 2017 and the HMRC consultation on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Our holistic approach enabled us to get in front of this existential policy risk, design messaging, and create and implement an outreach strategy – with winning outcomes. Our outreach included working jointly with the CBI policy to lobby HMT civil servants, briefing key HMT and BEIS Ministers and using the press strategically to push our messaging. This was a high impact campaign with important consequences – had we not been successful at mitigating this risk, our client’s whole business model and other UK infrastructure projects would have been under threat.