“Coastal towns including Sidmouth are among the fastest growing areas for UK microbusinesses.” [This is Money – from the GoDaddy’s Venture Forward report]
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There are both opportunities and challenges for rural businesses – and when looking at Sidmouth and the South West as good places to work and to do business, the messages are mixed.
However, these parts are not only ‘rural’ – but are also on the coast.
In particular, working from home enables working from the seaside, as reported from Budleigh Salterton last year:
Activity also seems to have increased in seaside towns, including Budleigh Salterton in Devon. The town which had a reputation as a place to retire, has attracted an increasing number of young families. Adam Sweet, a structural engineer who largely works from home, said when he arrived in the town in 2016 he knew of only one family with young children in his neighbourhood. “Since then, there’s 10 or 20 families in our area who’ve all moved in and I know a lot of people who are waiting to move in to Budleigh, it’s become quite a family area,” he said, adding: “People can live further away now.”
And this week, the national media have been reporting about the entrepreneurial boom beside the seaside [The Times] and how coastal towns in Britain have become micro-business hotspots [the Mail’s This is Money]:
The fresh sea air and occasional sun might be the main attraction of Britain’s coastal towns, but they’ve also become a hotspot for entrepreneurship. Coastal towns including Felixstowe, Bournemouth and Sidmouth are among the fastest growing areas for UK microbusinesses, which have fewer than 10 employees.
GoDaddy’s Venture Forward report mapped more than 600,000 businesses across Britain to find each area’s ‘microbusiness density’ against each 100 residents. The number of small businesses registered in the UK last year reached a record high, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics.
Andrew Gradon, head of GoDaddy UK & Ireland, said: ‘The UK’s small business community is in good health and we’ve seen growth in microbusiness density in most parts of the country. Many iconic coastal towns have been at the heart of this boom. The trend is particularly pronounced in the south of England, as people have moved out of London post-Covid.’
East Devon, up 23 per cent, also outstripped the national average.
And from the Exmouth Journal:
Sidmouth on the list of entrepreneurial seaside towns | Exmouth Journal
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