Companies House data is highlighting that 2019 was a record year for new company formations with almost 700,000 new registrations over 12 months.
The data, which has been quoted in research by The Centre for Entrepreneurs shows a rise of almost 3% on the previous year. One of the most notable sectors for new company formations was tech start-ups, making up 6.4% of the 681,704 new companies coming on stream in 2019. This figure was underpinned by a handful of locations that are becoming synonymous with the tech sector such as Bournemouth and Poole, Brighton and Hove and Cambridge. In Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch, technology companies accounted for more than one-quarter of all newly registered businesses.
Whilst London once again lead the table as the location for the highest number of new company formations, other locations including Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Bristol all continued to play host to increasing numbers of start-ups. The Centre for Entrepreneurs research acknowledges the fact that the geographical spread is skewed by the location of virtual offices and organisations that help individuals to start their business. Just 200 postcodes account for 16.3% of all the new companies formed in 2019 – over 110,000. Locally, there were 909 new registrations in the Chichester District, 2,462 in East Hampshire and 902 in Arun.
Whilst the tech sector saw a large number of new formations, in total there were new registrations in over 700 industries. The research identified 10 new business alone that were created to raise and care for llamas and alpacas…!
The research does not draw conclusions as to why the number of new companies increased in 2019 other than to say it forms part of a continuing trend since 2014. However, Brexit, a number of big name companies making large scale redundancies and the challenging retail environment are all likely to have played their part.