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Two or three clusters, read side by side across sectors, research, companies, capital, infrastructure, government designations and UKIZ relevance. There is no score and no ranking: British clusters are different from one another, not better or worse than one another.

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Side by side

Dimension	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Leeds & West YorkshireYorkshire and the Humber	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber
Sectors	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Financial Technology Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech
Research	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	University of Leeds	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Leeds health data and digital health cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. Health data infrastructure, teaching hospitals and university research facilities.	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	Financial services depth locally, but early-stage health technology capital remains limited.	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.
Government programmes	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	No place-based designation recorded.	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports
What exists	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.	National health data organisations, medical technology, a large financial and professional services base and a research university with data and materials strength.	The largest concentration of industrial decarbonisation activity in the UK: hydrogen, carbon capture, process manufacturing, biologics scale-up capability and two Freeports with substantial serviced industrial land.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Ownership of the value in electrified vehicles: battery, power electronics and software increasingly sit outside the region and outside the UK. Innovation-active SME supply chains are under-capitalised.	A clear route for companies to work with health data at scale, and clinical adoption pathways that move faster than pilot projects.	Skills pipelines and company formation. The land, power and permits exist; the innovation companies and the technical workforce to fill them do not yet exist at the same scale.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.	Leeds health data capability connected to Manchester clinical research and to medical technology manufacturing, giving companies discovery, evidence and production in one region.	Industrial land and process scale-up capability connected to research clusters elsewhere that have technologies without a place to build them — a national scale-up site rather than a regional one.
UKIZ relevance	The region's transition depends on owning the new value in a vehicle rather than assembling someone else's. The proposed Midlands zone focuses on batteries, power electronics and software.	Health data at population scale is a national asset. The proposed Manchester mission and Leeds capability are complementary rather than competing.	This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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