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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	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands	Southampton & PortsmouthSouth East	LondonGreater London
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Defence & Security, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Advanced Materials	Financial Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Creative Industries, Digital Technologies Supporting: Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Engineering Biology, Defence & Security
Research	University of Nottingham	University of Southampton National Oceanography Centre	Imperial College London University College London King's College London Queen Mary University of London The Alan Turing Institute The Francis Crick Institute
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.	Not recorded on the map. Naval and maritime engineering facilities, photonics research centres and port 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.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.	Prime contractor supply chain finance and public programmes rather than venture 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.
Government programmes	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports	Solent Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.
What exists	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.	Maritime, naval and defence engineering, marine autonomy, photonics research and a major port and logistics complex.	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.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base.	Routes for smaller innovators into defence and maritime procurement, and a civil market for capability developed for defence customers.	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.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification — one Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors.	Marine autonomy and photonics connected to Plymouth marine capability, Bristol robotics and offshore energy operations — the same technologies serving defence, energy and shipping.	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.
UKIZ relevance	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.	Marine autonomy is where defence, robotics and clean energy meet. The proposed Cornwall & Devon marine mission connects to this capability directly.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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