The Agency by Agency Atlas 2026 Agency clusters

One important distinction from the previous chapter: London as defined here includes its commuting zone, which in Chapter 5 would have fallen within the South East region. This means London’s figures in this chapter are larger than in the regional analysis, and the two sets of data are not directly comparable. As with the regional analysis, agencies are mapped by operating address and a single agency may operate across more than one cluster. Workforce and turnover figures have been adjusted so that each agency’s contribution is distributed proportionally across its locations. 

Understanding how the sector distributes across these clusters and what drives the differences between them is essential both for those seeking or supplying agency services outside London, and for the Industrial Strategy’s ambition to cultivate a genuinely distributed creative economy. After all, agency clusters act as an engine for local economies more broadly, from creating jobs beyond the agency-focused roles to boosting overall spending in a locality.

The cities growing fastest are not the ones you might expect

Manchester is the UK’s second city for agencies by almost every measure, but it leads across the country when it comes to average agency growth at 5.5%. It is closely followed by its near-neighbour Sheffield (5.3%), alongside Leicester (5.2%) and Newcastle upon Tyne (5.1%). Bristol, often cited as the UK’s leading creative city outside London, ranks fifth on growth. Nevertheless, all the cities mentioned above have a higher growth rate than London (4.2%).

More striking still is the productivity picture. Oxford leads all fifteen clusters on GVA per head at £114,051, ahead of Bristol (£110,629) and well ahead of London (£95,281). Manchester, which accounts for 12.4% of all cluster GVA and 8.7% of the workforce, records a GVA per head of just £77,262, below the national average and below cities a fraction of its size. 

Edinburgh, the most productive city by turnover share relative to workforce, records the lowest GVA per head of all fifteen clusters at £62,228.

The headline story here is that size and productivity are not the same thing in the UK agency cluster landscape, and that some of the sector’s most economically productive and dynamically growing communities are cities that rarely feature in national conversations about the creative economy. Anyone with an ambition to build creative hubs beyond London may find its most fertile ground not in the obvious second-tier cities, but in the clusters currently flying under the radar.

Where the agencies are: London, Manchester and then a long tail

London in our definition of a city cluster is home to 41.9% of agencies, a figure that rises from the regional chapter’s 35.6% to reflect the inclusion of the capital’s commuting zone. Manchester (6.4%) is the clear second cluster, followed by Leeds (4.5%) and Birmingham and Wolverhampton (3.4%). Bristol (2.4%) ranks fifth, ahead of Brighton and Hove (1.8%), Glasgow (1.7%) and Edinburgh (1.6%). 

The remaining seven clusters each account for between 1.2% and 1.3% of agencies, forming a remarkably even bottom tier. The concentration at the top is significant, but so is the breadth of the distribution: The fourteen cities outside London each host active agency communities, even if none individually approaches Manchester’s scale.

On workforce and turnover London’s dominance deepens, but Bristol performs well

London’s workforce and turnover concentration is even more pronounced when looking at agency clusters compared to the UK’s regions, reflecting the inclusion of its commuting zone. Manchester (8.7% of workforce, 6.1% of turnover) and Leeds (5.2% workforce, 3.7% turnover) follow in employment terms, but Bristol stands out: with 2.4% of active agencies and 3.7% of the total workforce, it generates 4.6% of total turnover, a ratio that places it ahead of Leeds on turnover despite employing fewer people.

Liverpool, by contrast, accounts for 1.3% of agencies but just 0.6% of workforce and 0.2% of turnover, which is the largest gap between agency share and economic contribution of any cluster, suggesting a base of smaller, lower-revenue agencies.

Manchester generates £1.73bn in GVA but ranks eleventh of fifteen clusters on GVA per head

London’s total GVA of £8.81 billion across its cluster zone dwarfs all others. Manchester (£1.73bn, 12.4% share) and Bristol (£1.45bn, 10.3%) form the second tier in absolute terms, followed by Leeds (£1.04bn) and Edinburgh (£840m). The remaining ten clusters each generate less than £600m.

In getting a sense of the productivity of each city cluster proportional to its size, the GVA per head data offers a different perspective and reorders the rankings dramatically. Oxford leads at £114,051 per head, ahead of Bristol (£110,629) and London (£95,281). Manchester, despite its scale, records just £77,262 per head, below the sector average of £94,452, and eleventh of fifteen clusters. Edinburgh ranks last at £62,228. 

The divergence between Manchester’s absolute GVA contribution and its per-head productivity is one of the most interesting findings in this chapter and raises questions about the specialism mix and commercial model of the agencies that make it the sector’s dominant regional centre.

The northern clusters are growing fastest

Average growth rates across the fifteen clusters range from 5.5% in Manchester to just 0.7% in Oxford. Sheffield (5.3%), Leicester (5.2%) and Newcastle upon Tyne (5.1%) form a tight cluster at the top, all growing well above the sector average of 3.5%. Bristol (4.9%) and Nottingham (4.8%) are close behind, with Glasgow (4.5%) and Edinburgh (4.4%) also outperforming the average. London (4.2%) sits in the upper half of the distribution. 

At the other end, Bournemouth (2.4%), Birmingham and Wolverhampton (2.9%) and Brighton and Hove (2.9%) grow below the sector average, while Oxford’s 0.7% stands as an outlier. Oxford’s low growth rate alongside its high GVA per head suggests a mature, high-value but slow-moving agency market, one where established agencies command significant premiums but where expansion is limited, possibly by talent availability or the dominance of a small number of large players.

The growth traffic light adds important texture. Sheffield combines a high average growth rate (5.3%) with one of the lowest proportions of agencies Shrinking fast (1.3%), a combination suggesting genuine, broad-based momentum rather than a small fast-growing tail masking wider decline. Manchester (13.2% Growing fast) and Liverpool (13.2% Growing fast) share the highest proportions of fast-growing agencies alongside London, while Bournemouth carries the highest proportion of shrinking agencies, pointing to a cluster under more sustained pressure than its modest average growth rate suggests.

As with the regions, investment is almost entirely a London story

The concentration of investment in London at the cluster level is similar to the regional picture. London’s 55.6% share dwarfs all other cities, many of which do not even register in our data. Manchester follows in a distant second (1.4%), then Birmingham and Wolverhampton (0.9%), Edinburgh (0.7%) and Newcastle upon Tyne (0.7%). Bristol, often positioned as the UK’s leading creative hub outside London, receives just 0.5% of cluster investment, despite being home to 2.4% of active agencies and 3.7% of the agency workforce. 

For seven of the fifteen largest agency clusters in the UK, private investment into the sector is, in practical terms, non-existent. This almost complete absence sits in direct tension with the growth data showing several of these same cities outperforming London on average growth rates.

Innovation funding is more evenly distributed relative to the size of the different agency clusters. London leads on Innovate UK funding with 32.0%, with Manchester having a 14.3% share. Together London and Manchester account for almost half of all Innovate UK funding across the fifteen clusters. Leeds (2.7%), Edinburgh (2.4%), Bristol (2.2%) and Newcastle upon Tyne (2.1%) form a modest second tier. 

Sheffield, which leads all clusters on average growth rate, receives 1.3%. Nottingham, despite growing at 4.8% on average, receives virtually nothing. The pattern suggests that Innovate UK funding in the agency sector is flowing to clusters with established relationships with public innovation bodies, and that for several fast-growing cities, the innovation funding infrastructure that could accelerate their development is not yet accessible in any meaningful way.

“Sheffield, Leicester and Newcastle upon Tyne are among the fastest-growing agency clusters in the UK. None receives meaningful private investment.”

— The Agency by Agency Atlas 2026

Agency clusters and questions for the sector

The cluster data brings the Atlas 2026’s regional analysis into sharper focus and gives every audience engaging with the UK agency sector plenty to think about. 

One tension that can be found in the cluster data is between where agencies are growing and where investment and public support are flowing. Sheffield, Leicester and Newcastle upon Tyne are among the fastest-growing agency clusters in the UK. None receives meaningful private investment. The Creative Industries Sector Plan’s ambitions for regional cluster development need to engage with this reality directly: the market is not currently directing capital towards the clusters with the strongest growth momentum, and public policy has a clear role in addressing that misalignment. 

For those looking for opportunities in the sector, the UK’s fastest-growing agency clusters (Sheffield, Leicester, Newcastle, Nottingham) are precisely the kind of markets that a size-focused investment strategy would overlook. The challenge is visibility and due diligence infrastructure: finding and evaluating agencies in these markets requires sector intelligence.

For agencies in the clusters growing fastest, the data offers a striking opportunity framing. The combination of above-average growth, minimal investment competition and strong Innovate UK potential in some clusters describes a market where well-positioned agencies can grow without the talent and client competition that defines London. 

Many questions remain. Is the UK agency sector’s growth happening in the places most capable of converting it into long-term economic value? Or are the clusters building the fastest doing so on foundations that have not yet developed the productivity and commercial depth to sustain what they are creating? The answers will shape not just individual investment decisions, but the trajectory of the UK’s creative economy for the next decade.