Swansea has been named one of the ten best cities in the UK to run a business — and on one measure it beats every other city on the list.
Business owners here spend an average of 17 minutes commuting, according to research by The Co-operative Bank — eight minutes less than anywhere else in the top ten, and 11 minutes less than first-placed Liverpool.
The bank ranked UK cities on the conditions it says shape how business owners fare: commute times, the number and cost of co-working spaces, retail rents, venues for team socials, and how happy residents say they are.
Swansea came ninth overall, in a top ten headed by Liverpool, Nottingham and Exeter — and ahead of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Cities including Manchester, Brighton and Cambridge miss the list entirely, with all three instead appearing among the bank’s five most expensive places to run a business.
How Swansea scores
Swansea’s happiness score of 7.3 out of 10 — drawn from Office for National Statistics wellbeing data — matches Liverpool, Edinburgh, Exeter and Newcastle, with only Milton Keynes scoring higher in the top ten at 7.4.
Retail space in the city averages £15 per square foot a year, according to the study — less than half London’s £31, and below Bristol, Edinburgh and Exeter at £17.
Co-working is Swansea’s weaker suit: five spaces feature in the study, at an average of £2,436 a year — the second-highest cost in the top ten.
The city also offers 46 activities and games venues for team socials, the bank found.
London ranks as the most expensive UK city for business owners, with co-working averaging £3,960 a year; Southend-on-Sea is the cheapest, with retail rents of just £7 per square foot.
A workspace picture on the move
The co-working count is also a moving target. The 136-year-old Palace Theatre reopened in November 2024 as Tramshed Tech’s newest hub — a £10m restoration that won its Neath builder the UK’s Best Builder title — and the innovation hub was already expanding within months.
The new-build side has silverware too: Swansea Council’s 71/72 Kingsway, on the old Oceana nightclub site, was named the most impressive commercial workplace in the South of England and Wales in May.
The Princess Quarter has been filling, with Redkite Solicitors among the firms taking space there.
And more is coming: the St David’s car park closed for good on Monday ahead of demolition — clearing the site for a new-build office hub set to house council staff relocated from the seafront Civic Centre.
The bank’s ranking is built from publicly available sources — commute times from Numbeo, co-working data from Coworker.com, retail costs from Zoopla, wellbeing scores from the ONS — and the full study is on The Co-operative Bank’s website.
