Locating a city to set up your new business can be time consuming and stressful as you try to weigh up cost and convenience over available customers and demand. Expert Market have devised the an index of the best cities to launch a start-up. The research evaluates specific data points to provide a detailed picture of exactly what each city has, or hasn’t got to offer start-up entrepreneurs in 2017.
Edinburgh, with its speedy internet connections, reasonable office rent and host of university graduates to employ, came out as the best place for a new venture. To create the index of the top cities for enterprise across the entire UK, Expert Market gathered data from a range of official sources released over the last 12 months.
The study collected statistics for 10 different data points; everything from business survival rates, commercial rent prices, and broadband speeds, to the availability of employable talent, and transport links to all the cities in the UK.
The analysis of local authorities shows Bristol and Edinburgh both have a more promising start-up community than London which ranked third, and Liverpool and Brighton then came in 4th and 5th respectively.
Worcester, Canterbury and Exeter appear to be some of the worst places to start-up a business, with York, Chelmsford and Aberdeen propping up the bottom of the table.
‘Entrepreneurship is reaching all corners of the country,’ says Adelle Kehoe, head of research at Expert Market.
‘It is great to see places like Edinburgh and Bristol being championed as business hubs and this hopefully gives budding business owners a few more options for where to base their start-up. As costs in the capital continue to soar, naturally we will see other cities come to the fore and with fast internet, good office spaces, connections to the city and access to talented staff it’s clear to see why Edinburgh has been the city of choice for thousands of start-up businesses in the last year.’
Further reading on the best city to start a business
