In London, business development can feel almost frictionless: international capital arrives, professional networks overlap and a new company can find advisers, customers and investors within a few tube stops. In parts of northern or coastal England, growth often looks different. It may depend on a manufacturing facility, a university partnership, a transport link or one determined local employer willing to stay through several difficult years.
I have always found England’s business landscape more interesting when these two pictures are held together. London dominates the imagination, and often the statistics, but it is not the whole story. The country’s economic energy is distributed unevenly, with each region building its own combination of advantages, constraints and ambitions.
In 2025, England had approximately 2.33 million businesses registered for VAT or PAYE. That figure captures employers and firms large enough to enter the tax system, rather than every informal or very small venture, but it still gives a useful sense of scale. London alone accounted for about 538,000 businesses. The capital’s lead is substantial, and it reflects much more than population size. London concentrates finance, technology, media, consulting, international headquarters and a deep pool of specialist workers. A business entering the market there is often buying access to relationships as much as office space.
The concentration can be intimidating. Costs are high, competition is visible and a young company may find itself surrounded by better-funded rivals. Yet London offers something that is difficult to reproduce: a dense market in which a meeting can quickly become a partnership, a trial contract or an introduction to someone three levels higher in a corporate hierarchy. For business development, that density matters. Opportunities do not have to travel far before they collide.
Outside the capital, the pattern becomes broader and less obvious. The South East had around 405,000 VAT- or PAYE-registered businesses in 2025, followed by the East of England with 271,000 and the South West with 235,000. These figures do not describe identical economies. The South East benefits from proximity to London, major transport routes and a large concentration of established companies. The East of England combines commercial activity with research, agriculture, life sciences and growing technology clusters. The South West has a more dispersed economy, with strengths that include aerospace, advanced engineering, creative industries, tourism and maritime activity.
I think this is where simple regional rankings become misleading. A region with fewer businesses may still offer a particularly strong environment for a certain sector. A company developing marine technology will not assess the South West in the same way as a fintech founder assessing London. A life sciences firm may care more about research partners and laboratory space than about the number of nearby headquarters. Business development is not just a count of companies; it is the search for the right ecosystem.
Foreign investment shows another version of this regional divide. During 2025–2026, direct foreign investment brought 326 projects to London and created 14,261 new jobs. The capital’s international role is unmistakable. It remains the first destination for many overseas companies that need access to finance, legal expertise, global clients and a workforce with experience in international markets.
But the strongest English region outside London was the North West, which attracted 115 foreign direct investment projects and 5,254 new jobs during the same period. That result reflects the region’s unusually varied economic base. Manchester and Liverpool are prominent, but the wider North West also includes advanced manufacturing, energy, chemicals, logistics, digital businesses and life sciences. Its appeal is not simply that operating costs can be lower than in London. The region offers industrial knowledge and established supply chains that can be decisive for an investor moving beyond a service-office model.
The East of England produced an especially striking result of its own. It attracted 35 foreign direct investment projects, creating 5,216 jobs. The number of projects was much smaller than in London or the North West, but the job total was almost as high as the North West’s. That suggests a different investment profile, with individual projects capable of having a major effect on local employment. Large facilities, research operations and production sites can change a regional economy more visibly than a collection of small offices.
That contrast is easy to miss in national headlines.
Across English regions, 774 foreign direct investment projects were recorded in 2025–2026. The United States was the largest source market, responsible for 239 projects in the UK and 15,796 new jobs. American investment matters not only because of the number of projects. US companies often arrive with established international networks, detailed expectations about scaling and the financial capacity to make substantial commitments. Their presence can create demand for local suppliers, recruitment firms, legal services and specialist contractors, although the benefits depend heavily on how well those connections are built.
For me, the most revealing question is not where investment lands first, but what happens afterward. A new project may create jobs immediately, yet its deeper value lies in whether it becomes part of the local economy. Does it buy from regional suppliers? Does it work with colleges and universities? Does it train people for roles that remain in demand after the initial launch? Does it encourage other companies to follow?
Business development is often described as if it were a polished activity conducted in meeting rooms: identify prospects, make introductions, close deals. In England, the harder work is usually more practical. It involves proving that a region has the workforce, transport, energy capacity, planning system and institutional patience to support growth. A promising pitch may open the door, but reliable infrastructure is what keeps the visitor from leaving.
This is why local knowledge carries real commercial value. A company based in London may have access to a global network, yet still need a regional partner that understands a particular planning authority, industrial estate or skills shortage. A firm in the North West may be closer to production expertise and lower-cost premises, but it may need help reaching overseas buyers. In the East of England, a business linked to research may have excellent technical credentials while facing the slower, less glamorous task of turning them into products and recurring revenue.
I have also come to distrust the idea that regional development must imitate London to count as successful. A city or county does not need to reproduce the capital’s financial sector, nightlife or office towers. It may be better served by becoming exceptionally good at one narrow field, then building the training, suppliers and public institutions around it. Specialisation can look modest from a distance and be highly valuable up close.
The biggest obstacle is often not a lack of ideas. England has plenty of them. The difficulty is connecting ideas to money, talent, customers and time. Small firms can have strong products but weak sales capacity. Universities can produce excellent research without a clear route to commercialisation. Local authorities can support investment while struggling with limited resources and long approval processes. Each gap is manageable on its own; together, they can make growth feel unnecessarily slow.
That makes the most effective business development less theatrical than people expect. It is persistent relationship-building. It is a regional agency remembering an investor’s requirements months after the first conversation. It is a founder returning to the same potential customer after improving the product. It is a college adjusting a training course because employers keep asking for a skill that is missing. None of this produces an impressive photograph, but it is how an economy becomes easier to do business in.
England’s figures point in two directions at once. London remains the country’s dominant business centre and its strongest magnet for foreign investment. Yet the North West, the East of England and other regions are attracting projects with their own distinctive strengths, sometimes producing a large employment effect from a relatively small number of deals.
I find the unevenness more encouraging than alarming. It means England is not relying on one commercial engine, even if London still supplies much of the noise. The real opportunity lies in making the connections between these economies more productive: linking London capital with regional expertise, overseas investors with local suppliers, and research institutions with companies capable of turning difficult ideas into durable businesses. A map of England’s business development is not a single upward line. It is a network of places learning, at different speeds, how to make growth stay.