Lord Lansley Champions Clusters for Regional Growth at UKREiiF 2025

Speaking at REIF 2025, Lord Andrew Lansley, Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire Development Forums, called for the forthcoming Industrial Strategy to trigger a UK-wide initiative to link clusters.

Lord Lansley said:

“The Industrial Strategy will focus on growth sectors and key places across the UK which offer the greatest growth potential. Clusters are key to linking together the companies in key sectors and bringing place-based support to SMEs and growing businesses. The economic benefits of agglomeration are strongly evidence-based.

In this country we have many strong clusters, such as the Harwell Space cluster which I visited two weeks ago, and we have great place-based initiatives like the Ox-Cam Supercluster, Cambridge Ahead, the 'Growing Together Alliance', the Connected Places Catapult and the Innovation Corridor.

With these components, we should now link the sectoral and place-based clusters into a platform for clusters across the UK to share knowledge, experience, and links to government support. This should enable UK clusters to join the European Clusters Alliance and European Cluster Collaboration Platform, realising the enhanced opportunities stemming from the new UK-EU relationship.

So, I call on the government and the key cluster organisations to join together to create the shared platform for clusters in this country to promote innovation and investment, trade and skills in both our growth sectors and our great places to live and work, like Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire and across the Arc.”