After such a challenging year for businesses, which UK cities are fighting back with the strongest entrepreneurial spirit?
Instant analysed the population to startup ratio across the country’s top cities to discover which locations saw the highest concentration of entrepreneurs in the last 12 months. Our data revealed the following top locations for entrepreneurs launching new ventures:
Most Entrepreneurial Cities
Manchester and Leicester are leading the pack, with a large uptick in new business launches. Despite being the UK’s largest city, London only ranks third on the list this year, as more businesses were registered outside the capital.
With so many businesses revaluating their real estate portfolios in 2020, some suburban locations saw demand for flexible office space surge by 100%. Some of the biggest demand drivers in smaller satellite towns across the UK include home workers looking for local office space and small companies seeking to cut costs. Our UK Flex Market Review also shows that supply of office space grew by 4% last year, despite Covid-19.
Manchester Snatches the #1 Spot for Business Growth
Manchester came out on top as the UK’s most entrepreneurial city, with a 32% increase in the number of businesses registered in 2020 and an entrepreneurial index of 34. This means one company was registered per every 34 people living in the city.
These new Manchester businesses were founded largely in the retail, online sales and e-commerce sector, as well as in finance and consultancy.
Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, the Manchester economy looks set for a strong recovery. The latest quarterly economic survey by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce – which surveyed more than 300 local businesses – revealed an increase in domestic sales and international trade activity.
The QES showed a rebound in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors, and a 24-point quarter-on-quarter increase for the Greater Manchester Index.
Nearly half of the businesses surveyed also reported that they were looking to recruit more employees this quarter. This includes businesses in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and business support services.
Entrepreneurial Leadership in Leicester
Leicester is second on the list, following closely behind Manchester with an entrepreneurial index of 38.
When it comes to the sheer volume of companies registered, Leicester outperformed all the rest. This East Midlands city saw an impressive 46% rise in new business registrations between 2019 and 2020.
Leicester was also ranked as one of the UK’s most popular entrepreneurial hotspots by a nationwide study, which found that 5,345 new businesses had been registered in the city since the start of lockdown. This marked a rise of 72% year on year.
London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Liverpool also ranked as top cities for entrepreneurs, both in the data we analysed and in this study.
Entrepreneurial Growth in the UK
Overall, entrepreneurship increased across the board in the UK during 2020, with company registrations surging in every city analysed. The country saw a significant surge in companies registered, with an increase of nearly 59% during 2019 – 2020, compared to the period before.
With the current economic uncertainty and restrictions on business operations, 2020 hardly seems like the obvious year to take the plunge and start a business. However, it seems that the effects of the pandemic are driving innovation rather than hindering it.
Even before the rise of COVID-19, from 2016 to 2020, redundancy and unemployment were driving entrepreneurship in the UK. AXA research found that 30% of small businesses founded during this time were started by people who had been made redundant or had been unemployed. With the recent sharp rise in the UK’s redundancy rate, this trend is only set to continue.
The widespread switch to remote working and online shopping fuelled a digital transformation in the UK. This has also given aspiring entrepreneurs the final push needed to start their own businesses from home.
Second Wave of Business Growth in 2021
After the surge in new businesses last year, entrepreneurship is still on the rise in the UK, with 48,350 companies registered since the start of 2021. The majority are in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool and Leicester.
According to research, one in five UK adults plan to launch a business before 2021 is over.
Method:
We built our own tool to analyse Companies House data and uncover how many new businesses were launched in some of the UK’s top cities between 2019 and 2020. We overlaid this with population data to discover which cities had the highest new business to population ratio. These are ranked in our Entrepreneurial Index.
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