Tech Nation: Bournemouth and Poole’s digital firms are top for high growth

The thriving tech industry in Bournemouth and Poole has a greater proportion of high-growth businesses than anywhere else in the country.

The latest report from Tech Nation, a publicly funded organisation set up to promote digital technology says the sector employs 15,763 people and is worth £352million a year to the local economy. In 2015, Bournemouth was named the UK’s fastest-growing digital economy in the report and revealed that Bournemouth Borough Council had set ambitions to be one of the top 20 global digital hubs by 2020.

The report, which examines the tech industry across the UK, says 26% of companies in Bournemouth and Poole’s digital “cluster” are high-growth – compared with Newcastle in second place with 22%.

The report highlighted the new co-working spaces, including one opened by THIS Group in the Daily Echo’s building on Richmond Hill. It also found there were 199 start-ups since the last report with workers paid an average salary of £39,508.

With its 7-mile stretch of sandy beaches and its notoriously youthful culture, you can see why Bournemouth is the place to be; 95% of tech workers said quality of life was “good” or better, while 91% rated digital growth optimism as good.

The talent coming out of the National Centre for Computer Animation and Visual Effects at Bournemouth University and the success of the Digital Wave careers conference last year and the business accelerator programme First Bourne were also mentioned.

It highlights the massive success of the Silicon Beach conference, which expanded into London last year. Each year the digital conference brings together an inspirational collection of thought-leaders and creators, from a wide variety of disciplines and serves as an ever-growing reminder of our ambitious and up and coming location.

Prime Minister Theresa May has said: “Today more than 1.5million people are already working within the digital sector, or in digital tech roles across other sectors, while the number of digital tech jobs across the UK has grown at more than twice the rate of non-digital tech sectors. From analysts to web developers to software architects, these pioneers of our digital economy are at the forefront of a great British success story.”