The Most Sustainable UK Cities for Businesses
There’s a growing concern from consumers, customers, and clients that businesses they use and buy from operate sustainably. Many factors affect how eco-friendly a company is but where you base an organisation also has an impact. We wanted to determine where the most sustainable cities in the UK are to start or run a business.
To work it out we analysed 76 cities across the UK and created a score for every one that weighted each factor equally to rank the cities out of 100. This included 55 cities in England, eight in Scotland, seven in Wales, and six in Northern Ireland. To avoid outliers we removed any cities with a population below 5,000.
The eco-friendly factors applied were:
- The number of BREEAM certified office buildings in each city
- Renewable energy capacity per 100,000 people
- Public Transport Access (stops per square mile)
- UK LEZ and ULEZ schemes
- City recycling rates
- Business survival rates
- EV Charging devices per 100,000 population
Find out which cities are the most sustainable places to operate a business and those that aren’t as eco-friendly.
Top 10 sustainable business cities
Cambridge comes out as the most eco-friendly city to start a business in the UK. However, four out of six Welsh cities feature in the top ten. These are likely boosted by the higher recycling rates found across many cities in Wales compared to their neighbours in England.
Two out of eight Scottish cities also feature while no cities in Northern Ireland make the top ten.
Worst 10 sustainable business cities
All ten of the least sustainable UK cities for businesses are in England. There are a lot more cities in England compared to the other nations and they’re not helped by a lower recycling rate across most of them too.
Brighton and Hove being the tenth least sustainable city for businesses in the UK is slightly surprising as it has an eco-friendly reputation and was the first place in England to elect an MP from the Green Party.
Most sustainable regions for businesses
Cities in Wales are generally more sustainable locations to run a business with those in Scotland also performing well. These are boosted by better recycling rates in general, but there are significantly fewer cities in both countries compared to England
The full data for England shows a clear north-south divide, despite the West Midlands being the worst region. Ripon is the only northern English city that makes the top ten for the country and just three feature in the top 20. In the top half of the table for England there are 16 cities in the south and Midlands compared to just six northern English cities.
Some other significant results from our research found:
- Manchester has the highest number of BREEAM certified office buildings
- Inverness has the highest Renewable Energy Capacity per 100,000 people
- Westminster has the best Public Transport Access (stops per square mile)
- Swansea has the highest recycling rates
- Lisburn has the best business survival rates
- Westminster has the most EV Charging devices per 100,000 population
- There are no ULEZ/LEZ zones in Northern Ireland
Business sustainability scores for all UK cities
These are the business sustainability scores for all UK cities broken down by region:
East Midlands
East of England
North East
North West
Northern Ireland
Scotland
South East
South West
Wales
West Midlands
Yorkshire and the Humber
Sources
- breeam.com – the number of BREEAM certified office buildings in each city
- gov.uk, NISRA, and NRS – renewable energy capacity per 100,000 people
- GetByBus (England), gov.uk (Wales and Scotland), and Translink (Northern Ireland) – public transport access (stops per square mile)
- gov.uk – information on UK LEZ and ULEZ schemes
- gov.uk, statswales.gov.wales, data.gov.scot, daera-ni.gov.uk – city recycling rates
- ons.gov.uk – business survival rates
- maps.dft.gov.uk – EV Charging devices per 100,000 population
Where city level data was not available, figures were obtained at a local authority level
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