The Central Cardiff Enterprise Zone offers businesses a central location and easy access to the city centre, as well as financial incentives. 

Cardiff is emerging as an unlikely hub for the television and film sector, where businesses can access a niche film-making community while getting government support

The financial and professional services sector in Wales is growing at pace, buoyed by the relatively low cost of salaries in the country and an abundance of graduates. And, with the economic climate forcing an increasing number of companies to seek cost-cutting solutions, the country's appeal is only set to increase.

The Welsh capital of Cardiff offers all of the benefits of a large city, without the large price tag. Slowly, its relatively cheap but well educated workforce and attractive government incentives are starting to draw companies away from rival English cities.

Once the poster child of the UK's industrial decline, Sheffield's recession-defying growth in recent years has been based around the city and surrounding region using its past as a steelmaking and mining centre to embrace more modern technology, all backed up by training programmes supplying a steady stream of engineering talent.

The Advanced Manufacturing Park, or AMP, located just outside Sheffield has attracted myriad leading names in the metals industry since its opening in the mid-1990s, maintaining the region's reputation as a global leader in this sector.

Derby has a history of innovation dating back to the industrial revolution, a mindset that continues to serve it well into the digital age. Local authorities – keen to make the city somewhere to live as well as work – have spent the past few years improving Derby's leisure offering, all of which is enabling the city to continue to punch above its weight.

The UK's manufacturing decline of recent years seems to have bypassed Derby, which has met the challenge of low-cost competitors in the developing world by focusing upon quality.