The UK’s space industry has called on the Government to set up a national programme under its industrial strategy to boost business.

Companies in Britain’s £14bn a year space industry are pushing hard for the programme to form a key plank of the sector deal, which could be announced as soon as next month.

Richard Peckham, chairman of trade body UK Space, said setting up a national space programme would give an extra push to the sector, which aims to expand to £40bn a year by 2030.

“The sector deal would inject more life into the industry, especially by setting up a national programme,” he said. “This is not a Brexit reaction but we could form partnerships with other countries such as India and work on programmes with them.”

Britain is currently a prominent member of the European Space Agency (ESA), and will likely remain part of the body once the UK leaves the European Union. However, unless a trade deal can be worked out, British companies are almost certain to be excluded from working on two of ESA’s biggest projects – the Earth observation system Copernicus and the Galileo GPS programme – because they are funded by EU money.