Transport and storage revealed as fastest growing sector in Preston over the past 5 years

New research has found that the transport and storage sector in Preston has "skyrocketed" over the past five years, as the local authority’s fastest growing industries are revealed.

iwoca, one of Europe’s largest small business lenders, analysed ONS data and found that transport and storage was the fastest growing industry in the local authority between 2017 and 2021, with the number of businesses growing by 45.8% to 350 firms.

Preston saw the industry’s third fastest growth in the sector out of all local authorities in the North West, following Bolton and St Helens which saw an increase of 121.6% and 65.1% respectively.

The number of production businesses in Preston also grew by 19.7% over the same period, followed closely by the construction sector which saw a 18.4% increase.

iwoca calculated the 'top 10 industry growth trends in Preston', by looking at the number of VAT and/or PAYE based local units by broad industry group using the ONS data set 'UK business: activity, size and location' 2017 - 2021.

Behind transport and storage, production and construction, the next fastest growing sector in Preston was accommodation & food services, which grew by 13.7 % between 2017-2021, followed by business administration & support services at an 11% change, education at 10.0%, wholesale 9.2 %, Information and communication 8.8 %, property 3.8 % and finally retail with a 1.3 % change.

Christoph Rieche, iwoca CEO and co-founder, said: “As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, it’s positive to see so many industries grow, and new businesses being created despite the difficulties. At iwoca we’re committed to providing businesses in Preston the support they need to get back to doing what they do best. Given the pressures small businesses now face - from inflation to supply chain issues - it is vital that we provide all the support we can.”

Although these top 10 figures were calculated using the full five years of data, iwoca also compared the five year growth with each sector's specific growth between 2020-21, to see how much the pandemic altered previous trends.

This analysis found transport remained the fastest growing industry in the local authority during the pandemic, with 65 businesses created over the last year as demand for online deliveries grew, this is more than the total number of firms created in the sector during the previous four years in Preston.

Meanwhile, despite experiencing some of the fastest growth between 2017 and 2021, the production and construction sectors slipped down the growth charts in the last year as the economy grappled with the pandemic.

As well as Preston, the transport sector was also the fastest growing across the North West between 2017 and 2021, with the number of businesses increasing by close to a sixth (15.6%).

iwoca adds that the growth of the sector could mean more jobs for people in a region which was hit hard by the pandemic, citing also how official data records 52,000 vacancies in the transport and storage industry in the UK in quartile three of this year - an increase of 56% on the previous three months.