Peterborough ranks as 6th best UK city to start a remote business in

Staying at home during the pandemic has prompted many to start up a new business from home.

With tech giants, Google and Twitter declaring remote working for the foreseeable, emerging businesses could skip office expenses entirely.

For a lot of business owners, coronavirus normalised remote working and flexible shift patterns. And while working from home may not be for everyone, it can be beneficial for certain types of people – especially budding entrepreneurs looking to kick start their business.

Home confinement has left a lot of us searching for ways to kill time. And for some people, that has meant picking up new hobbies or rekindling old ones. The more industrious of those groups have decided that now could be the perfect opportunity to monetise their crochet skills – or penchant for DIY pottery.

With many laid off or furloughed staff finding new home-based businesses to make some extra cash, as well employers re-evaluating the need for costly office space, Dojo, part of the Paymentsense brand, has found out which city in the UK is the best place to turn lockdown hobbies into a successful side hustle.

Peterborough has been rated sixth-best place to start a remote business with a total index score of 145 points out of 252.

The Dojo analysis has crunched the data on some important factors to consider when starting a business: population size, the startup survival rate, and the average salary for full-time work and unemployment rate.

To make this especially relevant for home-based businesses, they have added the requirements for successful remote working. This includes; average broadband speed in different areas, the number of post-offices per city to serve online delivery and sales, and the cost to rent a one-bed apartment in the city centre.

Peterborough’s index scores were:

5-year start-up survival rate: 40.9%

Weekly average pay for full-time work: £605

Average monthly rent for 1-bed city apartment: £655.62

Unemployment rate: 4.6%

Average disposable income per week to residents: £441

Broadband speed: 39MB

Number of Post Offices: 1,134

Peterborough however, has one of the lowest unemployment rates out of all the UK cities examined. The UK’s current unemployment rate sits at 5.1 per cent and Peterborough ranks 0.5 per cent lower, at 4.6 per cent.

With the average monthly rent for a one-bed city apartment sitting at £655.62 and the weekly average pay coming in at £605, Dojo’s analysis concludes there is little wonder that it ranked in the UK’s top 10 cities for remote work.

Gloucester came top of the ratings, with East of England cities Norwich, St Albans, Chelmsford and Lincoln also figuring in the top 10.