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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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Dimension	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	Leeds & West YorkshireYorkshire and the Humber	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands
Sectors	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Financial Technology Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security
Research	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	University of Leeds	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Leeds health data and digital health cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. Health data infrastructure, teaching hospitals and university research facilities.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.
Capital	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	Financial services depth locally, but early-stage health technology capital remains limited.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.
Government programmes	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones
What exists	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	National health data organisations, medical technology, a large financial and professional services base and a research university with data and materials strength.	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	A clear route for companies to work with health data at scale, and clinical adoption pathways that move faster than pilot projects.	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.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	Leeds health data capability connected to Manchester clinical research and to medical technology manufacturing, giving companies discovery, evidence and production in one region.	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.
UKIZ relevance	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	Health data at population scale is a national asset. The proposed Manchester mission and Leeds capability are complementary rather than competing.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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