Top 10 Reasons Businesses Come to Coventry & Warwickshire

Deciding where to launch or relocate your business is a huge decision. From local funding opportunities through to recruiting from the local pool of talent, choosing the right location can be crucial to its chances of success.

Coventry and Warwickshire are among the most popular areas of the UK for new businesses to get off the ground. The city was named the second most popular in the West Midlands for setting up a new business, while the West Midlands itself came third in the UK.

Jeremy Moore, head of Business Solutions, the commercial arm of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s Growth Hub, gives 10 reasons why the region should be top of the list for budding entrepreneurs across the UK.

The city has a high rate of international patenting

Coventry and Warwickshire have long boasted a strong heritage for inventions. From the bicycle, a creation of Coventry inventor James Starley, to traffic indicators, the brainchild of Charles Humpherson in 1912, the area is known for its innovation and today boasts one of the highest rates of international patenting in the UK.

Its commercial space is up to 60 per cent cheaper than London

London may be one of the world’s largest commercial hubs, but with property prices to reflect its status on the world map there are not many start-ups that choose to locate themselves in the capital. Of those that do, only half survive their first three years. A growing number of businesses choose Coventry and Warwickshire as their ideal location, recognising its advantages over the capital.

Coventry and Warwickshire is within the top 25 per cent fastest growing economic areas in the UK

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that since the 2008 recession Warwickshire has achieved the biggest increase in productivity – above all other local authority areas in England. Everything the county’s workforce produced in a typical 37.5-hour working week in 2009 is now being produced in 29.3 hours – effectively from a five-day week down to four.

It is just 60 minutes from London

Many entrepreneurs dream of setting up in London. It is vibrant, dynamic and diverse, not to mention well-connected with other cities across the globe. But competition is fierce. Overflowing with new start-ups every year competing against well-established businesses, many entrepreneurs are doomed to fail. With excellent rail and motorway links Coventry and Warwickshire are just an hour from the capital and offer equally exciting opportunities.

It is within a two hour drive of 75 per cent of the rest of England

Coventry and Warwickshire are at the heart of the motorway network, meaning everywhere in England – from the furthest point north in Northumberland to the furthest point south in Cornwall is within 300 miles, or a five hour drive, of our region.

Silicon Spa is one of the UK’s largest games development clusters

In recent years Leamington has built a gaming and creative cluster. Affectionately known as Silicon Spa, it is renowned as a world leader in the gaming industry, making a huge contribution to the UK economy.

There are 16 universities within an hour of Coventry, giving access to 100,000 students

From the city’s own Coventry and Warwick universities, and including Leicester, Birmingham and Aston universities, businesses can choose from a fantastic talent pool of graduates coming through the system every year.

Research and Development Centres of Excellence in advanced engineering and manufacturing, connected and autonomous vehicles, low carbon technologies, games development and digital technologies.

With the right resources in place Coventry and Warwickshire have established themselves for their world-class research capabilities across various sectors, leading to new knowledge and a wider range of new, ever-improving products.

The area boasts an abundance of automotive, aerospace and rail OEMs.

Clearly established as a world leader in design and manufacturing Coventry, Warwickshire and the wider Midlands area remains attractive to companies from across the UK and abroad looking to drawn on our renowned skills to boost their own innovation, design and development.

There are 3,000 firms in the area supporting the creative and digital sectors.

The rapid growth of the digital engineering supply chain in the region, supporting some of the major UK’s largest manufacturers such as Jaguar Land Rover and the London EV Company (formerly LTI), is helping to place Coventry and Warwickshire firmly on the map.