IS-8: What the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy Means for You


IS-8 What the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy Means for You

On 23rd June 2025, the UK Government published Invest 2035: The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, setting out a 10-year vision to accelerate productivity, strengthen innovation, and fuel long-term economic growth.

At the centre of this plan are the IS-8 sectors, eight industries identified as critical to the UK’s future competitiveness. These sectors are already attracting government funding, targeted interventions, and private investment, making them essential for businesses, local authorities, and economic developers to understand and track.

But there’s a challenge: there’s no single agreed-upon list of businesses that fall into these sectors. Sector definitions are vague, and SIC codes alone fail to capture emerging industries. That’s where DataGardener’s advanced company intelligence comes in.

UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy

What Are the IS-8 Sectors?

The government’s strategy identifies eight growth-driving industries:

  1. Advanced Manufacturing

  2. Clean Energy

  3. Creative Industries

  4. Defence

  5. Digital & Technologies

  6. Financial Services

  7. Life Sciences

  8. Professional & Business Services

Each of these sectors is already attracting increased government investment and policy interventions. For local authorities, lenders, researchers, and businesses, the ability to track activity within these industries is becoming increasingly important.

Why Do the IS-8 Sectors Matter?

The IS-8 industries are more than a government label. They represent:

  • Future job creation – entire new industries (like hydrogen power) are expected to employ thousands.

  • Innovation clusters – cities and regions will become hubs of specialist expertise.

  • Attracting global investment – making the UK a magnet for private and foreign capital.

  • Supply chain opportunities – SMEs can become vital suppliers to larger IS-8 firms.

In short, if you’re not tracking these sectors, you’re missing where the UK economy is heading.

But tracking them isn’t easy.

The Challenge: Tracking IS-8 Sectors

While the government has published Sector Definitions Lists that map IS-8 industries against SIC codes, there’s a big problem:

  • Many high-growth areas don’t fit neatly into SIC codes (e.g., heat pumps, nuclear fission, sustainable finance, AI-driven defence tech).

  • Companies are often misclassified or spread across multiple codes.

  • Local authorities, government agencies, and researchers are left building manual workarounds — combining SIC codes, keywords, and guesswork just to get a partial picture.

This leads to inconsistency, duplication, and confusion. Without a reliable way to map these sectors, different regions and departments risk making decisions on incomplete data.

The IS-8 Sectors: What Does This Mean for Local Places?

The Government has identified regional clusters and combined authorities as central to each IS-8 sector. These areas will receive priority for investment and policy interventions.

But growth isn’t limited to official clusters—supply chains and emerging hubs across the UK also play a critical role. With DataGardener, you can:

  • Benchmark your region against national averages

  • Spot untapped high-growth businesses in your area

  • Plan future investment strategies based on reliable, forward-looking data

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