Sir John Lazar CBE FREng, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering says:
“We are delighted to see support for innovative SMEs across the north of England. Our data shows that UK Spinout activity is becoming increasingly geographically diverse, with strong growth across a broad range of universities generating significant value. For instance, recent data shows the University of Manchester produced 30 VC-backed spinouts, Newcastle University had 16 and the University of Sheffield had 22 since 2010.
“What is not as abundant is investment for deep tech startups outside the Oxford, Cambridge, London region. Therefore, we support the objective of spreading economic opportunity across the UK and urge government and local authorities to take a system-wide approach to planning the environment in which local businesses can thrive.
"To further support investment and understanding of complex technology, we have created our Science and Technology Venture Capital Fellowship programme. We hope this scheme will also promote increased investment in innovation in all regions as we introduce venture capital investors to opportunities across the whole country.
“The Academy looks forward to working with No. 10 North as it delivers on its ambitions. Our six Enterprise Hubs are embedded in communities across the country, giving us a strong platform to both support the government’s vision for local empowerment and to work alongside founders and business leaders to help deliver it.”
Notes for editors
1. The Enterprise Hub supports talented entrepreneurs and decision makers to transform breakthrough engineering innovations into disruptive spinouts, startups and scaleups. It was ranked the number one startup hub according to the Financial Times/Sifted and 14th in Europe for 2025. Since launching in 2013, it has supported more than 600 researchers, recent graduates and SME leaders to start up and scale up businesses that can give practical application to their inventions. Hub Members have gone on to raise more than £3.8 billion in additional funding and create over 6,100 jobs.
2. The Royal Academy of Engineering creates and leads a community of outstanding experts and innovators to engineer better lives. As a charity and a Fellowship, we deliver public benefit from excellence in engineering and technology and convene leading businesspeople, entrepreneurs, innovators and academics across engineering and technology. As a National Academy, we provide leadership for engineering and technology, and independent, expert advice to policymakers in the UK and beyond.
Our work is enabled by funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, corporate and university partners, charitable trusts and foundations, and individual donors.