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
- London
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- Manchester
- Birmingham & the West Midlands
- Bristol & Bath
- Sheffield & Rotherham
- Leeds & West Yorkshire
- Liverpool City Region
- Newcastle & the North East
- Teesside & the Humber
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow & the Central Belt
- Belfast
- Cardiff & South Wales
- Southampton & Portsmouth
- Cornwall & Plymouth
- Nottingham & Derby
- Norwich & the East
Side by side
| Dimension | Southampton & PortsmouthSouth East | Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber | Liverpool City RegionNorth West |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Defence & Security, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Advanced Materials | Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies | Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries |
| Research |
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| Companies | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Naval and maritime engineering facilities, photonics research centres and port infrastructure. |
High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories. | Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets. |
| Capital | Prime contractor supply chain finance and public programmes rather than venture capital. | Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture capital. | A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate. |
| Government programmes |
| No place-based designation recorded. |
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| What exists | Maritime, naval and defence engineering, marine autonomy, photonics research and a major port and logistics complex. | One of the strongest applied manufacturing research bases in Europe, covering machining, materials, nuclear manufacturing and factory-scale process development, working directly with industrial customers. | Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | Routes for smaller innovators into defence and maritime procurement, and a civil market for capability developed for defence customers. | Domestic demand. World-class process capability is often demonstrated for overseas primes, and local SMEs lack the capital to adopt what is proven a mile away. | Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | Marine autonomy and photonics connected to Plymouth marine capability, Bristol robotics and offshore energy operations — the same technologies serving defence, energy and shipping. | Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers — energy, defence, mobility and medical technology — with procurement used as the connector rather than grants. | Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import. |
| UKIZ relevance | Marine autonomy is where defence, robotics and clean energy meet. The proposed Cornwall & Devon marine mission connects to this capability directly. | The research is world class; the domestic customer base for what it produces is thinner than it should be. The proposed Midlands and Teesside & Humber missions both depend on this capability. | Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation