The UK's regional cities are producing entrepreneurs at a far faster rate than the capital London over the last two years, according to research based on business launches filed at Companies House.

[Infographic below] Instant Offices mapped the UK’s start-up landscape over the last 24 months and compared it to the population size of each city, creating a leaderboard of the most entrepreneurial cities across the nation.

On this score, Liverpool had the highest density of start-ups, followed Birmingham, Manchester and Brighton, in that order. London was a lowly sixth behind Scotland's start-up capital Glasgow.

Considered Europe’s most entrepreneurial country, over 2,644,100 businesses have started in the UK within the last two years alone, according to data gathered from Companies House, with 2015 being a record year for start-up growth.

The research highlights key trends with certain cities way ahead of the UK average and the nation’s capital.

The population of Liverpool is estimated at 440, 000 and some 57, 323 new companies starting over the past 2 years, giving an entrepreneurial population percentage of 16%. Birmingham’s entrepreneurial population percentage was 14.5% followed closely by Manchester with 14%.

The numbers are significantly higher than the UK average of 2% and the nation’s capital London, which holds an entrepreneurial population of just 7.5% by comparison.

Tim Rodber, CEO of the Instant Group, said: “Undoubtedly, we have seen a resurgence in demand from the regions in 2015. Enquiries for flexible workspace in the regions were nearly a quarter up on the previous year and a lot of this demand was driven by one to two desks enquiries, which is indicative of start-ups.

“The strongest demand for space has come from the large cities outside of London where, proportionately-speaking, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Edinburgh are outperforming the capital.  SMEs are hungry for space in these regions but we are also seeing larger space requirements too, which means that corporates are setting up teams to cater for project work and serve the regional markets.

“It is also interesting to note that while enquiries for flexible space were up 21 per cent for the UK in total and 39 per cent in the regions, the growth in non-flexible office enquiries was up only 15 per cent, which suggests that many of these firms want space to grow but are not ready to commit to leased offices as yet.”