Compare places

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.

Choose up to three clusters

Side by side

Dimension	LondonGreater London	Norwich & the EastEast of England	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	AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies	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	University of East Anglia John Innes Centre Quadram Institute	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	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. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases.	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.	Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce.	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	Freeport East — Freeports	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.	Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep.	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.	Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland.	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.	Agri-food and genomics research connected to national food manufacturing and to engineering biology capacity, and offshore operations connected to the Humber and North East energy supply chain.	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.	Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford–Cambridge mission.	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

Back to the map →Methodology →