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Wolverhampton fourth best city in which to start new business

Wolverhampton is the fourth best city in the country in which to start a new business, according a new study.

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The city's selection of prime office space, below-average office fees and affordable cost of living all helped it outshine locations including London and Edinburgh according to researchers at Quality Formations, a firm specialising in forming new companies.

Across the West Midlands, Coventry was ranked the seventh best spot in the country while Birmingham was way-down the pecking order in 36th.

Cities were judged on eight core criteria including commercial property, energy prices, office services, public transport, broadband, workforce demographics, access to start-up finance and quality of life.

James Howell, Compliance Executive at Quality Formations, said: "Over the past decade, Wolverhampton has evolved into one of the UK's most important enterprise hubs.

"Residents enjoy a great quality of life, low crime and some of the UK's most affordable accommodation costs. It is for these reasons that Wolverhampton has won the number four spot on our list."

The multi-million pound new i10 development in the city was completed earlier this month.

The £8.1m building sees 28,000 sq ft of office accommodation arranged over three floors, which sits above 12,400 sq ft of leisure and retail accommodation.

It has already signed up its first tenants with Superdrug already on site fitting out its new shop, which is due to open in early 2016.

Meanwhile, Greene King became the first tenant to come on board last year and will open a Hungry Horse family-friendly pub restaurant on the ground floor.

Elsewhere in the list of the UK's 69 cities, Worcester came in at 26 and Hereford finished bottom of the pile in 69th.

Rebecca Honnan, Customer Service Manager at Quality Formations, said: "The UK plays home to some of the world's best business capitals. However, when it comes to starting a new business, sometimes it pays to look beyond cities like London in favour of some place with a bit more support in place to help you along the way.

"That's why we launched this study. We wanted to show aspiring business leaders that accommodation fees, childcare costs and crime rates are just as, if not more, important to the survival of a startup than the size of your local consumer base.

"Bearing that in mind, it wasn't a huge surprise when, after analysing all of the UK's 69 cities and tallying up these sort of crucial elements, we found that it was the UK's small-to-medium sized cities that were actually the most competitive."

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