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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	LondonGreater London	BelfastNorthern Ireland	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber
Sectors	Financial Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Creative Industries, Digital Technologies Supporting: Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Engineering Biology, Defence & Security	Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech
Research	Imperial College London University College London King's College London Queen Mary University of London The Alan Turing Institute The Francis Crick Institute	Queen's University Belfast Ulster University Centre for Secure Information Technologies	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Northern Ireland aerospace and composites cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Digital Catapult Connected Places Catapult Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Level39 University laboratories, teaching hospitals, data centre and compute capacity, and the densest transport network in the country.	Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities.	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.
Capital	London venture and growth capital ecosystem Venture, growth and public market capital at a scale unmatched elsewhere in Europe, plus corporate venture arms and international investors with UK offices.	A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US.	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	No place-based designation recorded.	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports
What exists	Four research-intensive universities, the deepest venture and growth capital pool in Europe, financial regulators, the largest concentration of applied AI companies in the UK and a global-scale creative production economy — all within one travel-to-work area.	Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector.	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	Circulation. Capital, talent and corporate demand concentrate in London rather than flowing outward, so capability elsewhere in Britain competes for attention with opportunities on the investor's doorstep. Cost also pushes production and scale-up activity out without a route back in.	Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially.	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	London as the demand and capital node of a national network: investors, corporate buyers and regulators deliberately connected to complementary manufacturing, materials and energy capability in the North, Midlands, Scotland and Wales.	Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains.	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	London's problem is not capability, it is direction of travel: capital and talent gravitate here rather than circulating. The proposed London zone focuses on using that density to fund and buy from capability elsewhere in Britain.	Northern Ireland's position between two markets is a commercial asset that is under-used. The proposed Northern Ireland mission treats it as the organising advantage.	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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