Part of our guide: AI consultancy in the North
An assumption lingers in UK business: London has the best consultants, top talent clusters in the capital and serious expertise means going to London consulting firms.
The assumption is understandable, because London has density and holds the major financial institutions, the big tech hubs and the venture capital money. A consultant in London has worked with more big companies, handled more complex transactions and dealt with more advanced problems.
That might have been true in 2015 and it is not true now.
The best senior practitioners in AI, whether CTOs, Chief Risk Officers or strategy leads, are increasingly distributed, and some of them are in London by choice. Some chose to leave and some never moved there in the first place, so the postcode no longer correlates with quality.
Why talent distribution has shifted:
The talent economy changed as remote work became real, and senior technologists could work anywhere and still command London salaries. More importantly, they could work anywhere and take on senior responsibility without moving to London, and nobody needs to be in a London office to be a trusted advisor to UK chief executives.
The cost of living shifted the calculus, and London rents for senior talent mean higher costs for consulting firms that then get passed to clients. A consultant in Manchester or Leeds with the same experience costs less, and that is a matter of a lower cost base (not a cheaper practitioner).
The talent distribution shifted away from pure tech hubs as large numbers of experienced people left London, with some going regional and some going international. They did not stop being good at what they do, and the only thing that changed was that they stopped being in SE1.
Sector expertise is more important than location
When you are choosing an AI consulting partner, what actually matters is whether they have solved this problem before, whether they understand your sector and whether they can anticipate what your board will push back on.
A consultant with 10 years in insurance, working from Yorkshire, is more valuable than a consultant with three years in various sectors based in London. That is pattern recognition, and the Yorkshire consultant has seen more insurance boards, more regulatory challenges and more cultural resistance, and that makes them better.
You do not get that expertise from a postcode, and you get it from time spent in the sector itself.
The regional advantages are real, if you're willing to use them
A consultant in Leeds or Manchester or Sheffield is more likely to understand the specific character of Northern business culture, a point that sounds vague and still matters. Northern boards are often tighter, making decisions faster, with less patience for abstraction and wanting to know cost and benefit clearly.
That is not universally true, and it is truer on average than it is for London boards, so a Northern business gains from a consultant who understands that cadence.
Remote engagement means you do not have to fly them down repeatedly, pay London hotel rates or schedule them around London tube strikes, and that is practical efficiency.
Smaller regional cities often have tighter professional networks where everyone knows everyone, and that is network advantage you actually use. A consultant with deep roots in Manchester or Yorkshire probably knows more of your peer group than a London consultant does.
The quality filter still applies
Being outside London does not mean you should accept lower standards, and the questions you ask should be the same:
"Walk me through a relevant engagement you've done." You want specifics, covering what the problem was, what they recommended, what the client did and what the actual outcome was.
"Can I speak to someone you've worked with recently?" You want references with current contact information (not just names), and you want to be able to call someone up.
"How do you stay current on AI?" There is a real risk with distributed consultants: they become disconnected from leading practice, and the good ones have clear answers, working with peer groups, publishing and speaking at conferences while the bad ones drift.
"What would you have done differently on your last major engagement?" You want self-awareness, and you want someone who can articulate what they learned and how they would approach it differently.
Those questions work whether the consultant is in London or Liverpool.
Why Oxygen Bubbles is based in Yorkshire:
We could be based in London and we chose Yorkshire instead, where Dan has roots and where the team is, and that gives us access to the Northern business network directly (not through a London filter).
That is a deliberate choice, and we work across the UK with London-based insurance firms, Manchester financial services businesses and Sheffield law firms. The location does not limit us and it is actually an advantage, because we understand the regional context of our clients and we are not pushing London-centric assumptions about how business moves.
The sector expertise is what matters, along with the regulatory knowledge and the track record, and the location matters only insofar as it affects your logistics and your consultant's credibility in your context.
If you're looking for an AI consulting partner:
Be sceptical of anyone who claims postcode as a credential, be rigorous about actually relevant experience, ask for references and dig into what they have actually delivered.
If that leads you to consultants outside London, that is fine, and you might find they are better value, better connected to your region and just as rigorous as anyone in the capital.
Get in touch if you want to talk through AI strategy, and we will be straight about what we can help with and what you would be better off addressing elsewhere.
If you are weighing this up for your own business, we have written in more detail about how we work in Yorkshire, across Greater Manchester and the North of England more broadly.