Edinburgh has come second in a UK wide study of the best cities in which to start a ‘side hustle’ during the Coronavirus restrictions.
Glasgow came eighth in the research rankings, with the only other Scottish city in the top 25 being Aberdeen, which was ranked 24th for starting a secondary business.
While the pandemic has caused an increase in unemployment rates, redundancies and a reliance on furlough schemes, there has been an emergence of new independent businesses since March.
Business advice organisation UK Domain analysed the UK’s 69 cities to find out which has the best environment to foster entrepreneurship. This included factors such as population, cost of living, broadband speed, life satisfaction, disposable income, average time working and commuting, and the number of new registered website domains.
Residents of the Scottish capital scored highly in terms of life satisfaction and amount of disposable income. But cost of living, broadband speeds and commuting hours meant Brighton beat it to the top spot. Despite this, 5,504 domains were still registered in Edinburgh from March to July.
The top 10 looked like this:
- Brighton
- Edinburgh
- Gloucester
- Bristol
- Cardiff
- Leeds
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Glasgow
- Sheffield
- Plymouth
Using UK Domain data on the number of new .uk domains registered during lockdown, the research also revealed that on average between March and June, there was a 22% increase in food and drink domains being registered, compared to the months prior to lockdown.
Exercise businesses also increased by 23%, indicating that people were investing in home workout gear and those whose businesses relied on gyms such as personal trainers had to move online.
Despite those increases, construction and automotive were just some of the industries that declined. Taxi services in particular saw a fall of 38%, according to the research.
