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Scotland is home to the highest number of budding entrepreneurs in the UK, with one in 10 people saying they hadn’t previously planned on starting a business, but the impact of Covid-19 has made them want to go freelance or start their own business.
Scots were followed by Londoners (7.8%) and those based in York (7.7%) who said the same thing.
A survey of 2,000 employed people in the UK by Edinburgh-based fintech firm FreeAgent revealed that nearly a third (31%) of Scottish adults have plans to start their own business or strike out as a freelancer at some point in the future.
Digging a bit deeper, 7.4% of Scots plan to start their own business within 2021, while a further 7.4% plan to strike out in the next couple of years and 17% are planning to do so at some point in the future.
Overwhelmingly, Scots want to start their own business in order to have more choice over what they do for a job, with half of the respondents citing this.
More a third (36.1%) want a better work/life balance, while just under a third (30.1%) believe they could earn more this way, and a quarter (25.3%) feel they would get a better sense of achievement.
Brexit does impact entrepreneurial plans however, with 40% of Scotts saying it puts them off starting their own business.
Among the other biggest concerns from when starting a new business were having the confidence to do so (25.6%), dealing with tax (22.7%) and complying with business regulations (21.6%).
Ed Molyneux, chief executive and co-founder of FreeAgent, said: “After a year of many businesses falling short and feeling the negative impact of Covid-19, it was no surprise to see people were mostly concerned about the financial burden of starting a business.
“This and the high number of people with the lack of confidence to do so, calls for intervention on a higher level, the government must seriously consider the ways in which they can best encourage and support entrepreneurs to practically turn their vision into a reality.”