This paper, by Burcu Sevde Selvi and Owen Garling, analyses how businesses operate within and across regions covered by the Growing Together Alliance, to better understand the strengths and specialisations of each area, and how these could contribute to a more interconnected and resilient national economy.
Business location decisions play a critical role in shaping regional economies, influencing investment, job creation, and economic resilience. While policy has often focused on fostering competition between regions—either by directing resources in high-growth areas or redistributing funding more widely—less attention has been given to the underlying connections between regional economies. This research examines firm location choices to provide new insights into how businesses operate across different geographies, helping to inform strategies that better support businesses and the places they operate in.
Understanding the trading address choices of firms is crucial for gaining insights into the connections between different parts of the economic landscape and the ways in which regional and national development strategies can harness these. Trading addresses, as opposed to registered addresses, reflect where companies actively conduct their business operations, interact with customers, and use local resources. These choices provide a clearer picture of the economic hubs within a region and the connections between them, revealing patterns of business activity, sectoral growth, and regional interdependencies.
This paper examines how businesses in the Growing Together Alliance (GTA) position themselves within and across different regions. By understanding these patterns, we can better understand the strengths and specialisations of each area, and how these could contribute to a more interconnected and resilient national economy. To do this, we look at the trading address choices of knowledge-intensive businesses across the six major regions in the United Kingdom (UK) that make up the Growing Together Alliance:
- BusinessLDN
- Business South
- Business West
- Cambridge Ahead
- Northern Powerhouse Partnership
- North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT)
The choices made by these firms reflect their strategic priorities, particularly in key sectors of the economy such as Life Sciences, Net Zero, and Data Infrastructure, and in turn, demonstrate connections between different regional economies.
For our analysis, we mapped and classified knowledge-intensive firms based on their sectoral activities using a dataset provided by The Data City. This dataset employs Real-Time Industrial Classifications (RTICs), which uses a combination of data scraping, machine learning, and expert input to categorise firms by the sectors of the economy in which they are engaged. Rather than relying on how firms may have recorded their business activities through the use of Standard Industrial Classification codes, the RTICs provide an up-to-the-minute picture using real-time data to highlight the types of sectors in which firms are operating.
While RTICs provide valuable insights and a dynamic perspective on the UK’s innovation economy, it is important to note that they have limitations. The dataset cannot explicitly explain why firms are located in specific places, but instead provides a high-level understanding of the interconnectedness between clusters, highlighting the need for complementary qualitative research to explore firms’ location decisions in greater depth.
This analysis complements a partner report, Connected Clusters (2025), conducted in collaboration with Growing Together Alliance members, which draws on interviews with business leaders, academics, and investors to provide deeper insights into the factors influencing firms’ location choices and the development of cluster connections.
Key findings
- Central London – Westminster, the City of London and Camden in particular – remains a critical hub for business activities, with a significant concentration of firms choosing to trade in the capital, particularly in sectors like CleanTech and Artificial Intelligence.
- Manchester, Leeds, and Bristol also serve as vital hubs for business activities, attracting firms from various regions and playing a significant role in the broader UK economy.
- Greater Cambridge and Manchester have emerged as key centres for specialised sectors, such as Life Sciences in Cambridge and Net Zero and Data Infrastructure in Manchester.
- Regional trading patterns highlight important connections between areas that drive growth across the UK. For example, Business South and Business West have strong ties to neighbouring regions, fostering local collaboration, while NWBLT connects with a wider range of regions, supporting broader interregional collaboration. These connections show how regions work together and rely on each other, creating opportunities for shared economic growth.
- Greater Cambridge is the smallest area by geography and population, and shows a strong regional presence highlighting a more localised and specialised focus. Though with fewer overall connections to other regions as is to be expected given scale, it is worth noting that the connections that do exist include major UK innovation companies headquartered in Cambridge.
- Firms based in GTA-related regions have strong business ties beyond their borders, with a strong presence in Birmingham, Cardiff, and Edinburgh.
The structure of the report is as follows: first, it defines trading and registered addresses within the context of business operations. Second, it introduces the partners of the GTA and outlines its goals. Third, the report details the dataset and methodology used, and finally, it presents key findings and insights from the analysis.
