Five top reasons it’s great to be a business based in Bristol.
Back in 2017 the Sunday Times announced Bristol to be the best place to live across the UK, and here at Computer Geeks we also believe it’s one of the best and most vibrant places to do business and somewhere we’re very excited and pleased to be based.
Bristol is renowned for its iconic historical landmarks with the beauty of the Clifton Suspension Bridge that traverses the famous Avon Gorge. It’s a city bustling with distinctive character; brightly coloured houses, even brighter hot air balloons that adorn the skies each summer, and it’s a city nonstop alive and awake with festivals, music concerts and creative events that’s hard pushed to be beaten anywhere else in England.
Computer Geeks are located in the heart of Bristol’s city centre and its surrounding Dockside community, where trendy bars and hipster cafes nestle alongside the many businesses, offices and shops that make up this entrepreneurial and friendly community.
We’re just ten minutes’ walk from the historic Temple Meads railway station, designed and built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1841. It was renovated in 2013 with the creation of The Engine Shed which is the home of the SETsquared programme whose purpose is to run events, workshops and outreach activities that stimulate economic growth in and around the city. It also houses many, exciting fast-growing start-ups which have been helping to drive Bristol’s exceptional economic performance over the past few years.
Bristol is also home to some brilliant centres of higher education with both UWE and the University of Bristol creating a fantastic wealth of students and a vast talent pool from which local employers can recruit.
In 2015 Bristol was named as the fastest growing city across the UK out of London, when it recorded 19.2 per cent growth thanks to strong performance in manufacturing, real estate and construction. Bristol has also been named as one of the top 10 cities for tech in Europe, and as one of the UK’s most productive tech cities. Bristol is the most productive sector when measured by digital turnover by employee.
There’re many reasons why we love being a part of this technologically savvy city but here’s five of our favourites:
- Best Location and transport accessibility
Bristol is ideally located for access to the whole of South-West England (including Plymouth, Exeter and Cornwall) and is ideally situated for access to the Avon and Somerset area and is also close to South Wales which can be quite easily reached across the Severn Bridge. Bristol is also less than 2 hours away from London, and has Bristol Port on the outskirts of the city. It’s the perfect location from which to reach our clients that are spread across all corners of the UK, which you can see on our client map.
Bristol is also well positioned on the M4 to benefit from its closeness to London, while being distant enough to ensure it has developed its own distinct personality; that of a creative, collaborative and friendly business community. It acts as a main connection point for the South West to the North of the UK including to cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Newcastle. Bristol also has an International airport, offering connections with the U.S. to over 50 cities across Europe and beyond. Bristol’s airport is the largest airport in the South West of England set to expand over the coming years.
- Bristol’s varied and friendly Business Networks
Bristol has many lively, vibrant networking groups available to consider, whether you are a new start up or an established business. There are some good networking groups to get involved with, including:
- Bristol’s the centre of a vibrant creative media and business hub
Bristol’s awash with creative industry with residents like Aardman Animations, Bristol Games Hub and other gaming businesses such as our client the Yogscast all residing in the city. Since 1999 there’s been a 106% increase in the productive output across the creative industries in Bristol. The city has become a central and important base for newer forms of social and mobile gaming with more than 500m users view digital content created locally every month.
- Broadband speed
With a focus on becoming one of the country’s first ‘Smart cities’, Bristol is investing hugely in its broadband and internet infrastructure; in order to offer businesses one of the fastest broadband connections available. Bristol has ranked above average on broadband speed; the average for the city is currently 34 MBps with the national average sitting at just 26MBps.
A scheme currently in progress will see the University of Bristol and thousands of businesses and homes gain access to gigabit speed broadband over the coming years; something that is of great appeal to any start up or growing business based in the city which we are very pleased will be on offer for companies like us and our clients to take advantage of.
- Inexpensive Office Space
Recently, Bristol has been announced the premier city in England to grow or start a business, seeing off competition from London, which ranked second. These findings resulted from research done by UCL , that assessed the country’s greatest populated cities and towns, looking for comparisons on quality, cost and availability of help for ambitious entrepreneurial start-ups. Bristol stands out for its reasonably priced office space, which is, on average fifty percent cheaper than London.
The future of Bristol is bright
There are some exciting new developments for the city in progress; The new Bristol Arena in progress, the launch of the new Metro Bus, regeneration projects like the Temple Quarter Zone bringing with it new office space, restaurants, housing and shops.
Based in Bristol, there’s a tangible sense of being part of a very exciting ever-expanding business community and all of these reasons above, are testament to this unique and ambitious city that we’re excited and very pleased to be part of; it really is one of the best places for a business to be based.
