Beyond London: The shifting landscape of the UK’s agency hubs

Our exploration of the UK’s 15 biggest agency cities reveals a striking pattern of concentration and emerging growth. While it’s no surprise that London remains the centre of creative agency work, with over nine thousand active agencies and roughly half the sector workforce, the story unfolding across the nation’s regional creative hubs offers a more nuanced picture of an industry in transition.

Read the article – Creative hubs: Exploring the 15 biggest agency cities

The 15 largest agency cities (including London) collectively represent more than two-thirds of all UK agencies and three-quarters of the sector’s employment. Yet beneath these top-line figures lies a complex sector showing varied patterns of maturity, growth and economic contribution that raise important questions about where the industry is heading.

Are mid-sized cities the future of agency innovation?

While London’s dominance appears unshakeable at first glance, the data suggests that some mid-sized cities are punching well about their weight. Brighton and Hove stands out with an agency concentration 3.6 times higher than would be expected for its population size. Similarly, Bristol and Oxford demonstrate exceptional concentrations of both agencies and talent.

This clustering effect raises some intriguing possibilities. Are these mid-sized creative hubs offering something that larger cities cannot? The productivity figures suggest that they might be. Oxford leads all fifteen cities with an impressive GVA-per-head of £90,090, significantly outperforming the sector average of £77,438. Bristol and Brighton also feature in the top six for productivity.

These patterns suggest that the optimal environment for agency productivity might not necessarily be the largest of metropolises. Instead, mid-sized cities with strong cultural scenes, educational institutions and a high quality of life appear to foster highly efficient creative ecosystems. For agency leaders and talent alike, this raises the question of whether the traditional London-orientated approach remains the main pathway to success.

Where is tomorrow’s agency growth happening?

Growth patterns across the creative hubs reveal another layer of the agency sector’s development. Birmingham and Wolverhampton (17.8%) and Glasgow (17.5%) are experiencing growth rates more than double the sector average of 7.3%. Manchester, already the second-largest agency city, continues strong growth at 15.6%.

Meanwhile, Cardiff emerges as a nascent creative hub, with nearly a quarter of its agencies (23.5%) established within the past three years, more than double the sector-wide average of 10.7%. This suggests a significant shift in the Welsh capital’s creative economy that few might have predicted five years ago.

These growth patterns point to potential redistribution of creative talent and business across the UK. Are we witnessing the early stages of a more geographically balanced agency sector? The data suggests regional cities with lower costs of living, improving infrastructure and vibrant cultural scenes may be capturing an increasing share of creative business.

Is concentration sustainable for the sector’s future?

The extraordinary concentration of the agency sector raises fundamental questions about sustainability and opportunity. The 15 cities highlighted account for 81.4% of the sector’s total turnover and 85.4% of its contribution to the UK economy, when measured by GVA.

This concentration brings advantages, such as dense networks of talent, clients and complementary services. Yet it also brings vulnerabilities. Agencies in these hubs face intense competition for talent and clients, driving up costs and potentially squeezing margins. Meanwhile, regions outside these hubs may struggle to develop and retain creative talent.

For investors, this concentration presents both opportunities and challenges. The established hubs offer proven markets but potentially lower growth and higher entry costs. Emerging centres, such as Cardiff, might offer better growth prospects but with higher uncertainty.

What lessons can be learned across creative hubs?

The varied performance of these creative hubs suggests that there is no single formula for success in the agency sector. London’s scale creates opportunities that are simply unavailable elsewhere, while Oxford’s exceptional productivity demonstrates that smaller centres can develop highly efficient creative businesses.

Cities like Birmingham and Glasgow offer some evidence that established industrial centres can reinvent themselves as creative hubs, given the right conditions. Meanwhile, the speed of Cardiff’s emergence highlights how quickly the creative landscape can shift when everything aligns.

For the wider agency community, these patterns suggest the importance of strategies that acknowledge local conditions, and that each creative hub has unique characteristics. For national industry bodies or policymakers, this is a reminder that a one-size-fits-all approach is rarely the most successful route, and that there needs to be consideration on how to better connect these varied creative hubs, facilitating knowledge sharing and opportunity across regions.

This is ultimately a story of an evolving sector, one still heavily concentrated in traditional centres but showing signs of geographic redistribution. As the industry continues to evolve post-pandemic, with changing client demands and working patterns, we may see these trends accelerate, creating new opportunities across the UK’s creative landscape. The agency sector’s future appears increasingly distributed, diverse and dynamic, while still anchored in these 15 vital creative hubs.

FAQs

For an overview of our methodology, the work with our partners at The Data City, and a glossary of definitions for all our data points, please take a look at our FAQs page.

Photo by Darren Coleshill on Unsplash