Start-up community generates £196bn every year for UK economy

Research from Virgin StartUp has found that the UK’s start-up community generates over £196 billion each year for the economy.

The report, entitled The Start-Up Low Down: How Start-ups are Changing Britain, found that 40 per cent of businesses were founded in the past three years.

Support

The report showed that entrepreneurs are helping to tackle the problem of unemployment by starting up their own business, with 45 per cent of those who applied for a start-up business loan being unemployed at the time.

The lowest number of start-ups was in 2009 during the recession, with the number of businesses created that year standing at 269,000.

However, there has been an increase of more than 50 per cent in the number of new businesses since, with 366,000 businesses started so far this year.

Restrictive

Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson said: “An improving start-up landscape is only part of the story as once a business hits maturity and begins to move out of its infancy years, pre-scale businesses find further funding restrictive and difficult to navigate.

“Virgin StartUp is calling on the chancellor to address this issue in his Autumn Statement.”