Digital tech is changing traditional industries… Are you adapting to the change?
Digital tech businesses are at the heart of the UK economy and are playing an important role in driving growth. They’re changing the employment landscape, driving productivity, and re-imagining traditional industries.
Last month, Tech City UK, the UK government-backed organisation tasked with accelerating the growth of digital business, launched the Tech Nation 2016 report. The report claims to present the most comprehensive analysis of the UK’s digital tech industries to date, in partnership with innovation charity Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).
Geoff Mulligan, CEO of NESTA recently stated “Digital technologies are unlike any others – they change everything businesses do. That’s why, as this research confirms, digital jobs and activity are becoming ever more important in traditionally non-digital areas of the economy – from retail to financial services and the public sector.”
Tech Nation defines the digital tech economy as including all jobs within the digital tech industries plus digital tech jobs within traditionally non-digital industries. The report includes a summary of 27 notable digital tech clusters across the UK including stats on employment, turnover, sector specialisms and more.
Key highlights included:
- The digital tech economy accounts for 1.56 million jobs, with job creation 2.8x faster than the rest of the economy between 2011 and 2014
- There are 58,000 identified active digital tech businesses
- Digital tech industries account for around £161 billion annual turnover
- Encouragingly (for those of us based outside of the South East!) over 75% of digital tech businesses are based outside of London
- 41% of all digital tech economy jobs exist within traditionally non-digital industries
- The top sector specialisms include app & software development (~ 17% of UK digital tech businesses) and enterprise software & cloud computing (~ 9%) – both relevant sectors for the housing and lettings market
- The top cluster by turnover, unsurprisingly, is London, followed by Reading & Bracknell, Bristol & Bath, Manchester and Birmingham
TouchRight are based in York, which is a growing tech hub in the North, and close to Leeds, which has a wealth of graduates from the city’s numerous universities and education institutions. According to Leeds Data City, there are over 3,500 digital organisations in the area. Last year, Google opened its first ever Digital Garage in Leeds, supporting over 3,000 business in 7 months, and TouchRight was able to benefit from that support. Leeds was also amongst 3 cities to share £11m in government funding to develop technology hubs.
Also in the recent budget, the government made several tech-related announcements, including:
- The government is to increase grant funding for ultrafast broadband in the South West to £14.5m; and confirmed a plan to create a broadband investment fund to support alternative network developers to increase competition to BT services
- The government reaffirmed its commitment to the UK FinTech sector, saying it will boost competition in UK retail financial services by pursuing more proportionate capital requirements for small banks, working with the New Bank Start-up Unit to promote the authorisation of new banks (so-called ‘challenger banks’)
- The government says it is committing funding to pioneering technologies such as driverless cars, and has committed £10m to create a new hub for data science to make use of ‘big data’ from the public and private sectors so that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) can produce more accurate, timely and innovative statistics
- A 5G strategy is planned for 2017, based on an assessment by the National Infrastructure Commission of how the UK can become a world leader in 5G, supported by a ‘network planning tool’ that will be trialled in Bournemouth
- Mobile users will benefit from plans to make companies unlock smartphones at the end of a contract for free
- Having introduced coding into the national curriculum in English schools, the government says it aims to continue building up the digital skills needed by the technology industry
It’s positive to see an increased focus on supporting tech industries in this way as the government recognises the importance of digital to the UK economy.
Although we’re yet to see ‘PropTech’ feature significantly as a sector specialism in the Tech Nation report, it can only be a matter of time before it starts to make more of an impact on the wider technology stage. For those of us working in the PropTech world, we know what positive productivity benefits technology is bringing to our customers in the housing and rental sectors, and this is only set to continue. If you’re interested to get more information on the Tech City UK report, it can be found here.
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