UK Startup Hotspots 2026: where Britain starts businesses
A ranking of every UK local authority by new companies per 10,000 residents, with the fastest-growing areas and the sectors each region is starting. Covers 578,462 incorporations from October 2025 to September 2026.
Key findings
- 578,462 new companies were registered to UK addresses in the 12 months from October 2025 to September 2026, once formation agent and virtual office addresses are removed. That is 83.3 for every 10,000 residents, down 6.9% on the previous 12 months.
- Westminster has the highest rate in the UK at 383.0 per 10,000 residents. Outside London the leader is Slough (175.5 per 10,000), followed by Luton and Manchester.
- North Devon is the fastest-growing startup area, with new companies up 11.4% year on year (493 to 549). Only 40 of 359 ranked areas grew.
- Outside London, the North West is the most entrepreneurial region or nation (87.5 per 10,000) and Northern Ireland the least (46.2).
- The most common new business in the UK is retail sale via mail order houses or via internet (32,485 companies). The sharpest regional speciality is in Scotland, where support activities for petroleum and natural gas extraction starts run at 6.95 times the UK average.
Top 20 areas by new companies per 10,000 residents
London boroughRest of the UK
Top 20 fastest-growing areas
Year-on-year change in new companies, October 2025 to September 2026 against October 2024 to September 2025. Areas with at least 250 new companies in the earlier year.
Full ranking: every local authority
Click a column heading to sort. Areas with fewer than 20,000 residents are shown but not ranked.
| Rank | Area | Region | Per 10,000 | New companies | Population | Per 10,000 (prev yr) | YoY change | Growth rank |
|---|
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Regions and nations
| Rank | Region or nation | Per 10,000 | New companies | Population | Per 10,000 (prev yr) | YoY change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London | 142.6 | 130,108 | 9,122,909 | 158.3 | -10.2% | |
| 2 | North West | 87.5 | 68,003 | 7,772,854 | 94.9 | -7.1% | |
| 3 | West Midlands | 85.7 | 53,156 | 6,205,854 | 93.4 | -7.9% | |
| 4 | East of England | 80.2 | 53,070 | 6,613,801 | 85.2 | -5.2% | |
| 5 | South East | 79.7 | 77,227 | 9,691,844 | 85.2 | -5.9% | |
| 6 | Yorkshire and the Humber | 75.7 | 42,919 | 5,672,166 | 80.7 | -6.0% | |
| 7 | East Midlands | 73.0 | 37,149 | 5,085,641 | 78.0 | -5.8% | |
| 8 | North East | 64.6 | 17,856 | 2,762,746 | 67.8 | -4.2% | |
| 9 | Scotland | 63.7 | 35,314 | 5,545,500 | 65.4 | -2.5% | |
| 10 | South West | 60.3 | 35,625 | 5,906,997 | 64.6 | -6.3% | |
| 11 | Wales | 60.2 | 19,118 | 3,175,181 | 62.8 | -4.2% | |
| 12 | Northern Ireland | 46.2 | 8,917 | 1,928,446 | 49.2 | -6.0% |
What each region is starting
Primary SIC code of each new company, October 2025 to September 2026. Dormant and non-trading companies excluded. "Over-represented" compares each sector's share of a region's new companies with its share across the UK (sectors with at least 100 new companies in the region).
London
- Buying and selling of own real estate (8,584, 6.7%)
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (8,322, 6.5%)
- Management consultancy activities other than financial management (5,362, 4.2%)
- Fund management activities (2.49x)
- Activities of financial services holding companies (2.09x)
- Motion picture production activities (2.07x)
North West
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (4,978, 7.4%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (3,564, 5.3%)
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (3,203, 4.7%)
- Dispensing chemist in specialised stores (1.74x)
- Other residential care activities n.e.c. (1.64x)
- Floor and wall covering (1.53x)
West Midlands
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (3,337, 6.3%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (2,812, 5.3%)
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (2,299, 4.4%)
- Renting and operating of Housing Association real estate (3.42x)
- Other accommodation (2.57x)
- Freight transport by road (1.95x)
East of England
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (2,589, 4.9%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (2,558, 4.9%)
- Management consultancy activities other than financial management (2,383, 4.5%)
- Combined office administrative service activities (1.41x)
- Other activities of employment placement agencies (1.4x)
- Other construction installation (1.33x)
South East
- Management consultancy activities other than financial management (4,108, 5.4%)
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (3,746, 4.9%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (3,617, 4.7%)
- Human resources provision and management of human resources functions (1.48x)
- Information technology consultancy activities (1.46x)
- Landscape service activities (1.39x)
Yorkshire and the Humber
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (2,472, 5.8%)
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (2,101, 4.9%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (2,017, 4.7%)
- Retail of furniture, lighting, and similar (not musical instruments or scores) in specialised store (1.9x)
- Public houses and bars (1.74x)
- Joinery installation (1.63x)
East Midlands
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (1,980, 5.4%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (1,857, 5.0%)
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (1,854, 5.0%)
- Freight transport by road (1.67x)
- Other residential care activities n.e.c. (1.47x)
- Maintenance and repair of motor vehicles (1.43x)
North East
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (855, 4.8%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (826, 4.7%)
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (819, 4.6%)
- Agents specialized in the sale of other particular products (3.44x)
- Other transportation support activities (2.75x)
- Other engineering activities (2.7x)
Scotland
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (1,792, 5.1%)
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (1,681, 4.8%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (1,478, 4.2%)
- Support activities for petroleum and natural gas extraction (6.95x)
- Joinery installation (3.12x)
- Scaffold erection (2.18x)
South West
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (1,752, 5.0%)
- Management consultancy activities other than financial management (1,644, 4.7%)
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (1,388, 3.9%)
- Mixed farming (2.43x)
- Manufacture of other builders' carpentry and joinery (2.15x)
- Residents property management (1.66x)
Wales
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (986, 5.2%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (888, 4.7%)
- Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet (823, 4.3%)
- Other holiday and other collective accommodation (2.24x)
- Public houses and bars (1.65x)
- Landscape service activities (1.46x)
Northern Ireland
- Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (483, 5.5%)
- Activities of other holding companies n.e.c. (358, 4.1%)
- Buying and selling of own real estate (356, 4.0%)
- Electrical installation (1.79x)
- Residents property management (1.44x)
- Other specialised construction activities n.e.c. (1.43x)
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Methodology
Companies. Every company incorporated at Companies House between 2024-10-01 and 2026-09-30, pulled day by day from the Companies House advanced search API (730 days). This includes companies that have since been dissolved, so it measures how many businesses were started, not how many survive. Overseas entities and UK establishments of overseas companies are excluded.
Location. Each company is placed by the postcode of its registered office, matched to its local authority with the ONS National Statistics Postcode Lookup (August 2026). 1,838 companies without a valid UK postcode are excluded.
Formation agents and virtual offices. Many companies use a formation agent, accountant or virtual office as their registered address, which would make a handful of central London postcodes look like the startup capital of the world. Any postcode that received 50 or more new companies in either 12-month period is treated as a mass-registration address and removed from both years. This removes 749 postcodes and 201,322 of the 779,784 located companies in the latest year. The Companies House default address in Cardiff is one of them. Central London boroughs still rank highly because smaller serviced offices sit below the threshold, so the page also reports the top areas outside London. With a threshold of 25, the top three outside London are Slough, Luton and Manchester (unchanged) and the fastest-growing area is North Ayrshire. With a threshold of 100, the top three outside London are Slough, Luton and Manchester (unchanged) and the fastest-growing area is North Devon.
Population. ONS mid-year population estimates, mid-2025 release (published 1 October 2026): mid-2025 population for the latest year and mid-2024 for the previous year. Areas with fewer than 20,000 residents (City of London, Isles of Scilly) are not ranked because small denominators distort the rate.
Growth. Year-on-year change compares October 2025 to September 2026 with October 2024 to September 2025, for areas with at least 250 new companies in the earlier year.
Reproducibility. The scripts that fetch the data and calculate every figure on this page are published alongside the CSV. Numbers will differ slightly from the official Companies House incorporation statistics, which count by registration jurisdiction rather than by address and do not remove mass-registration addresses.