Canterbury named as the best city to start a business in the UK

 StartupsGeek.com have created a study looking at the best place to start a business in the UK. The data analyses the cost over five years of starting a business, broken down into cost of salaries and office space. The research also looks into other factors including graduation retention rate, five year start-up survival rate, and average internet speed among others. Taking into account all the above factors we created an index to rank the cities. 

You can view the study here: https://www.startupsgeek.com/uk-startup-business-data/

The study aims to help potential entrepreneurs make an informed decision on which city to start a business. 

The top 10 cities for starting a new business:

Canterbury takes first prize as the best place to start a new business. Low start-up costs and a large talent pool, make it an attractive option to start a new business.

StartupsGeek.com also looked into the cheapest place to start a new business.

The top 10 cities to start a business by start-up cost (salary + office space):

Sunderland is the cheapest place to start a new business, where the cost of office space is almost a quarter of London prices. Starting a business in Liverpool instead of London, would save you over £250,000 over 5 years in salaries.

We also analysed the graduation retention rate (GRR), the number of graduates who remain in the city where they studied.

The top 10 cities for GRR:

London retains over three quarters of its graduates. Bolton, Salford and Manchester are all in the top 10, their close proximity to one another provides a large talent pool of potential employees. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are also able to retain a lot of graduates.

Another part of our research looked at the business survival rates of new companies over a five year period. 

Here are the top 10 cities with the best 5 year start-up survival rate.

The top three are all cities in the South-West of England. First on the list, Bath shows half of all new businesses survived through five years of trading. Exeter and Bristol were the second and third respectively.

Here are some other noticeable findings:

• Kingston-upon-Hull has the highest broadband speed in the country with an average download speed of 131.4Mbit/s, which is almost twice as fast as London.

• Oxbridge has a GRR below 20%, there is an opportunity for the cities to retain their talent.

• Starting a business in London costs nearly 20% more than anywhere else in the country.

You can view the study here: https://www.startupsgeek.com/uk-startup-business-data/

Joe Dawson, co-editor of StartupsGeek.com, said: “It’s often repeated that small businesses are the backbone of the british economy, and I think that small business has a big role to play in the economic bounce-back that we need after the trauma of 2020. The statistics in this study give us a snapshot of current conditions but it will be down to the next generation of entrepreneurs to capitalise on these opportunities. However with the right funding and policy to support those wanting to strike out on their own, local authorities and national government would be able to create conditions for small businesses to thrive in any of the forty locations in our study.”