Area covers from Telford in west to Leicester and Nottingham in the East, and takes in Coventry and Redditch in the south up to stafford in the north.
The East Midlands covers Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire,and Rutland. However there is not a strong road system and a large part of the area is rural so most midlanders would only consider Nottingham, Leicester and Northampton to be suitable venues when looking for IT contract work. The main industries include retail, with Boots headquarters at Nottingham, and Next headquarters in Leicester. Some Coal industry is still retained in Derbyshire and Nottingham alongside some heavy machinery manufacturing such as JCB, Caterpillar, Bombardier UK and LaFarge. Some of the larger financial institutions have a base in this area such as Capital One and Experian in Nottingham, Alliance & leicester in Narborough and Barclaycard in Northampton. The only big employee technology companies are Belkin and RS Components,
Shropshire in the west includes Telford which has a concentration of high tech industries such as Nikon, Unimation, Capgemini, Fujitsu, MITAC and EDS. There is an initiative currently, funded by the government, to develop the IT and tech sector in Telford and Wolverhampton so technology parks are being created and partnerships are being created with the University of Wolverhampton.
Staffordshire covers Stoke on Trent but this is not considered a high tech area.
Warwickshire and Worcestershire covering Redditch & Coventry. The IBM data centre and Telent are probably the only major companies left in this area.
For Birmingham in the West Midlands the largest employers include NHS with 126000 staff, Cadbury’s and what remains of the car industry. Tech companies tend to be small independent businesses but there remains a presence from Motorola, although that has been diminished in recent years and Fujitsu employs around 700 people.
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