Thinking of starting a business in the UK, but unsure about which city to put your roots down in? With enterprises rising and falling every day, it’s a good idea to be strategic about where you rent an office. Half of new UK businesses fold within 5 years of their inception, with the stats even more dire for London start-ups – only 50% of high growth tech companies survive beyond 3 years in the capital.
So how can you maximise your chances and ensure you’re not another unlucky statistic? It’s wise to research different cities and look beyond typical choices like London. Running out of money is almost always the cause of business death, so consider factors like the price of office rent and general living costs. And of course, if you’re out in the sticks are you going to be able to hire the employees you need?
To help you out, we’ve compiled data on some of the UK’s most enterprising cities. To identify thriving cities we’ve looked at the level of business activity growth by calculating how many more active businesses there are today compared to 5 years ago. We’ve also looked at the average business survival rates over 5 years for each city, so at the very least you can learn from other peoples’ mistakes!
Total Processing has looked at cities stretching across the whole of the UK – from the far reaches of Scotland’s Aberdeen to the English south coast. All the data has been consolidated into the helpful map below. We hope this will help you to figure out where business really is booming in the UK.
