Manchester among ‘most entrepreneurial’ cities in the UK

Manchester is the third most entrepreneurial city in the UK, according to new research.

Instant Offices has mapped out the UK’s start-up landscape over the last two years and compared it to the population size of each city, providing a leaderboard of the most entrepreneurial cities.

Liverpool comes out top with 134,569 new companies starting over the past two years, an entrepreneurial population percentage of 16%.

Birmingham’s entrepreneurial population percentage was 14.5% followed closely by Manchester at 14%, where there were 115,932 new companies formed over the past two years.

These numbers are significantly higher than the UK average at 2% and London, which holds an entrepreneurial population of just 7.5% by comparison.

Tim Rodber, CEO of the Instant Group, said: “As the largest broker of flexible workspace in the UK we are in a good position to take a market overview, and undoubtedly, we have seen a resurgence in demand from the regions in 2015.

“Enquiries for flexible workspace in the regions were nearly a quarter up on the previous year and a lot of this demand was driven by one to two desks enquiries, which is indicative of start-ups.”

“The strongest demand for space has come from the large cities outside of London where, proportionately-speaking, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Edinburgh are outperforming the capital.

“SMEs are hungry for space in these regions but we are also seeing larger space requirements too, which means that corporates are setting up teams to cater for project work and serve the regional markets.”

The figures by Instant Offices were obtained from Companies House.