Gloucester has been ranked as the best place to start a remote business. Who says so? Analysts at Dojo, an app helping customers accept payments and trade securely, which is owned by mobile payment processing company Paymentsense.
Dojo wanted to find out which city in the UK is the best place to turn lockdown hobbies into a successful side hustle, and this lovely cathedral city came out on top. The city has one of the lowest unemployment rates out of all the UK regions examined at just over four per cent.
Some of the things Dojo took into account included population size, the startup survival rate and the average salary for full-time work.
To make this especially relevant for work from home businesses, they added the requirements for successful remote working: average broadband speed in different areas, the number of post-offices per city, and the cost to rent a one-bed apartment in the city centre.
With the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment standing at £558 and an average broadband speed of 39MB, self-starters could be on track to turn their bedroom into a business say Dojo.
The full list is below. We’re not sure quite how scientific the survey is, but it’s Friday, and it’s a good news story….
| Rank | City | Population | Total Score |
| 1 | Gloucester | 129,128 | 162 |
| 2 | Norwich | 140,573 | 156 |
| 3 | Southampton | 252,520 | 153 |
| 4 | Carlisle | 108,678 | 148 |
| 5 | Swansea | 246,993 | 146 |
| 6 | Peterborough | 202,259 | 145 |
| 7 | Portsmouth | 214,905 | 145 |
| 8 | St Albans | 148,452 | 143 |
| 9 | Chelmsford | 178,388 | 143 |
| 10 | Lincoln | 99,299 | 141 |
| 11 | Canterbury | 165,394 | 139 |
| 12 | Exeter | 131,405 | 138 |
| 13 | Nottingham | 332,900 | 138 |
| 14 | Plymouth | 262,100 | 137 |
| 15 | Leicester | 354,224 | 136 |
| 16 | Belfast | 343,542 | 134 |
| 17 | Lancaster | 146,038 | 132 |
| 18 | Cambridge | 124,798 | 131 |
| 19 | Bradford | 539,776 | 131 |
| 20 | Wolverhampton | 263,357 | 129 |
