The UK Infrastructure Bank has set out its first strategic plan. How will it invest in local places and the public realm, and will its financial offer fit the needs of local government? Paul Dinsdale reports

Since its launch, along with much fanfare last year, the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) has kept a fairly low-profile – until now. That is only to be expected when a major financial institution is being created from scratch and its first chief executive, John Flint, the former boss of HSBC, was appointed only last September.

It has now unveiled its strategic plan for the first few years of operation and it couldn’t have come at a more important time for investment in infrastructure by public bodies, amid the national conversation on ‘levelling up’ and rebuilding local communities and ‘forgotten towns’.