The Agency by Agency Atlas 2026 Agencies and the regions

Because agencies are mapped by operating address, and a single agency may operate from more than one location, individual agencies can appear in more than one region. Regional shares of agency numbers will therefore sum to more than 100%, and workforce and turnover figures have been adjusted so that each agency’s contribution is distributed across its operating locations to allow for regional comparison.

Understanding the regional picture matters not just for those seeking or supplying agency services outside London, but also for those tasked with building a genuinely national creative economy, one of the stated ambitions of the UK’s Industrial Strategy.

London dominates, but the productivity data tells a more complicated story

Just over a third of all agencies (35.6%) are active in London, and the capital accounts for 48.8% of the agency workforce and 63.7% of total sector turnover. London’s average turnover per head of £260,762 is almost 50% higher than the next-placed region, and by almost every conventional measure, London is the dominant force in the agency sector and the gap with the rest of the UK is not narrowing.

At the same time, when we look at GVA per head as a measure of economic value added rather than simply revenue generated, the picture shifts in a way that should give both investors and policy makers pause for thought. Here, London ranks second, not first. The South West leads the UK on GVA per head at £104,276, ahead of London’s £95,515. Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East and the East of England all sit within a relatively narrow band of each other, and all are closer to London’s GVA per head than London’s turnover per head would suggest. The North East, meanwhile, records the highest average growth rate of any region at 4.8%.

The headline story therefore is not simply London’s dominance but the gap between London’s revenue concentration and its value-added performance, especially relative to regions that, on paper, look far less significant. For the Industrial Strategy’s ambition to build creative hubs beyond the capital, this data offers a more encouraging foundation than the turnover figures alone would suggest.

The sector tilts towards the South East, but regional presence is significant

Beyond the agencies operating in London, 17.9% can be found in the South East, making these two neighbouring regions home to the most significant agency community in the UK. The North West (10.2%) and East of England (10.1%) form a second tier, followed by the South West (9.1%), Yorkshire and the Humber (7.0%) and the West Midlands (6.9%). 

Beyond England, Scotland accounts for 4.3% of agencies, a meaningful presence for a nation of its size, while Wales (2.4%) and Northern Ireland (1.1%) each represent smaller but active agency communities. The regional spread, while London-dominated, is broader than many accounts of the sector sometimes acknowledge, as more than six in ten agencies operate outside the capital and many of the regions below the top two have developed genuine agency ecosystems of their own.

London’s share of the sector grows with each measure – from agencies to workforce to turnover

The further up the value chain you look, the more London dominates. Its 35.6% share of agencies rises to 48.8% of the workforce and 63.7% of total turnover. This suggests a pattern of concentration that reflects both the size of London agencies and the premium fees they command. 

With just under half the agency workforce in London, the regions with the next largest share of agency jobs are the North West (9.8%) and the South East (9.6%). Scotland is interesting in that it is the only region other than London whose share of the agency workforce (4.7%) is larger than its share of agencies operating in the country (4.3%).

London’s dominance of turnover, with almost two thirds of the sector total (63.7%) points to the fact that the capital is not only home to larger agencies but ones that operate in high-turnover sectors. Outside of London, regions such as the East of England (10.1% of agencies, 4.2% of total workforce and 2.8% of total turnover) indicates a concentration of smaller or lower-revenue agencies. The gap between agency count and turnover share is widest for the East, East Midlands and Wales, pointing to structural differences in agency scale and specialism across regions.

GVA in the regions: London leads in volume but not efficiency

London’s total GVA of £8.5bn dwarfs every other region: the South West (£2.2bn), South East (£2.1bn) and North West (£2.0bn) are its nearest competitors, each generating roughly a quarter of London’s total. Scotland (£1.3bn) and Yorkshire and the Humber (£1.3bn) contribute meaningfully, while Wales (£357m), Northern Ireland (£314m) and the North East (£472m) represent the smallest regional GVA pools.

When we look at GVA per head, however, the figures reveal a different hierarchy. The South West leads at £104,276, ahead of London (£95,515), Yorkshire and the Humber (£90,143) and the North East (£89,973). Scotland (£67,122) and Wales (£66,045) sit at the bottom of the GVA per head table, suggesting that despite reasonable agency numbers, the value being generated per employee in those nations remains below the national average.

Where growth is happening: The North is moving

Average growth rates by region range from 4.8% in the North East to 2.5% in the East of England and West Midlands. London (4.6%) and the North West (4.4%) round out the top three, while the South East (2.7%), despite its size, sits in the lower half of the regional growth table. Other regions that outperform the national average of 3.5% are Northern Ireland (3.9%), Scotland (3.9%), Yorkshire and The Humber (3.9%) and East Midlands (3.7%).

The growth traffic light adds further nuance to these growth figures. London has the highest proportion of fast-growing agencies (12.8%) alongside a meaningful proportion shrinking fast (3.4%), suggesting a more polarised distribution than regions with lower average rates but less extreme tails. 

The North East is notable for combining the highest average growth rate with the largest fast-growing cohort (13.4%), though also the highest proportion of agencies shrinking fast (5.3%), indicating a genuinely dynamic but volatile regional market. The South East and East of England, by contrast, show high stability but low growth, suggesting mature, settled markets rather than expanding ones.

Investment is an almost entirely London and South East story

London attracts 54.0% of all investment funding into the agency sector and the South East a further 36.0%, together accounting for 90% of total investment. The rest of the UK competes for the remaining 10%, with the East of England (2.1%), North West (2.0%) and East Midlands (1.9%) the next-placed. 

Scotland receives 0.7%, the South West 0.6% and Wales just 0.1%. Yorkshire and the Humber, which is the fifth-largest regional agency community by number and one of the fastest-growing, receives only 0.4% of investment. The concentration of private investment in London and the South East is even more extreme than the concentration of revenue, and reflects the geographic clustering of venture capital and growth investment infrastructure in and around the capital.

Innovation funding is more evenly distributed

The distribution of Innovate UK funding offers a markedly more regionally balanced picture than private investment. London leads with 22.3%, followed by Northern Ireland (19.7%) and The South East (15.0%). The South West (11.6%) and North West (11.0%) also receive meaningful shares. 

Scotland, despite its relatively strong agency presence, receives only 2.2%, and the East Midlands just 0.5%. Northern Ireland’s performance in Innovate UK funding likely reflects a combination of targeted innovation support, active engagement with public funding mechanisms and possibly a concentration of agencies in research-intensive specialisms within the region.

Agency regions and questions for the sector

The regional data raises a question at the heart of the UK Industrial Strategy’s creative industries ambitions: what does it actually mean to build a truly national creative economy?

The tension between revenue concentration and value-added performance is perhaps the defining feature of regional data we present here. London generates 63.7% of sector turnover but only 47% of sector GVA, and its GVA per head is lower than the South West’s. Meanwhile, the North East grows fastest, Yorkshire and the Humber performs above expectation on GVA per head, and Northern Ireland overperforms dramatically on Innovate UK funding. 

The data suggests that the agency sector outside London is structurally different in ways that create both distinct challenges and genuine opportunities. The Industrial Strategy’s Creative Places Growth Fund, with its emphasis on regional cluster development, needs to engage with that complexity rather than treating regional investment as simple redistribution from the centre.

When it comes to investment, the near-total concentration of funding in one corner of the country suggests perhaps an information gap as much as a geographical preference. If agencies in regions beyond London and the South East are growing at rates comparable to or even greater than London, the question is not so much whether there are investable businesses outside the capital (the data suggests there are), but whether the investment community has the sector intelligence to find and evaluate them.

What is clear is that the difference between the regions needs further examination, especially in light of the UK Industrial Strategy. Before the different regions of the UK can be properly supported based on their unique characteristics, whether in terms of investment and innovation funding or education and skills support, these characteristics need to be fully understood, from the types of agencies operating there and driving agency success, to where there might be shortfalls that could benefit from additional support.