Research into synthetic polymer nanodiscs, structures that arise from amphipathic copolymers (comprising hydrophilic and hydrophobic monomers) which capture membrane proteins and surrounding phospholipids into water soluble discs, has widely been applied towards the isolation and structural study of individual membrane proteins (MPs) and protein complexes by circumventing the intermediary role of detergents in MP solubilisation. This field was first launched by the discovery of the capability of a copolymer of styrene maleic acid (SMA) to faithfully solubilise MPs and surrounding phospholipids into 10-12 nm diameter styrene maleic acid lipid particles (SMALPs). It remains important, however, to expand the polymer nanodisc toolbox due to pH constraints of SMA activity and to avoid unwanted electrostatic interactions between the charges of the polymer and particular MP of interest. In the research hereby presented, we explore whether novel cationic copolymers of alkyl (methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl and isobutyl) functionalised maleimide units and hydrophilic N-methyl-4-vinyl pyridinium iodide (MVP) units as well as pseudo-zwitterionic copolymers containing negatively charged potassium 3-sulfopropyl methacrylate (KSPMA), positively charged quaternised 2-(dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate (qDMAEMA) and hydrophobic butyl methacrylate (BMA), each synthesised using RAFT polymerisation, can effectively solubilise membranes through solution 31P NMR studies. We establish the ability of new cationic and zwitterionic polymer classes to solubilise model phospholipid bilayers (simulated by DMPC large unilamellar liposomes) into lipid nanoparticles. The DMPC lipid extraction efficiency of cationic polymers is highly sensitive to the degree of hydrophobicity of the alkyl group with the methyl- bearing polymer showing no evidence of lipid extraction and the butyl- bearing polymer showing the highest lipid solubilisation. We have employed dye-leakage assay data using POPC:POPG lipid mixtures, to hypothesise that the cationic polymer class may be customisable to selectively form nanodiscs from bacterial cell membranes by optimising the hydrocarbon chain length of the alkyl substituent.