Where are UK companies founded? London has a startup rate over 14 times higher than Yorkshire
The UK’s startup scene is booming, with a record-high number of new companies founded last year – and London has the biggest share.
Over half a million, 581,000, new startups were started in 2014, according to data from Companies House.
With almost 80,000 of these in London, the UK capital has the lion’s share of hopeful entrepreneurs – but the South West and East of England are hot on London’s heels.
One out of every hundred Londoners founded a company last year. This puts the city’s startup rate over 14 times that of Yorkshire and the Humber, where growth is broadly flat, as only 66 companies were founded for every 100,000 inhabitants.
The number of businesses in the country has grown by 11 per cent on average over the past five years. On 28 August 2014, the year’s busiest day, 4,792 companies were started in a single day.
Ben Dowd, business director at O2 said the development was “encouraging”:
It’s encouraging to see that the UK continues to have a thriving startup scene, with a record number of entrepreneurs biting the bullet and starting their own business.