#uk-funding

#uk-funding

The UK has about 1.59GW of currently installed datacentre capacity at just under 190 sites. If we add existing capacity to that which is planned to complete by 2030 and which has planning consent, we get 4.9GW.

The UK digital entertainment sector hit £13.5 billion in revenue in 2025, reflecting a 7.1% year-over-year growth, significantly outpacing the general economy's growth rate of 1.3%.

Empirical Ventures has secured a £10 million commitment from the British Business Bank through its Regional Angels Programme, bringing the Bank's total support for the firm to £15 million. This funding will allow Empirical to write larger cheques to early-stage science-led founders across the UK, particularly outside London.

The TechFirst Women's Programme, backed by £4 million of government funding, aims to create at least 300 paid placements in technology roles across the UK. The programme will work with businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises, to identify opportunities for women to gain experience in fields such as software development, digital engineering, data science and artificial intelligence.

UK businesses face some of the highest electricity costs in Europe, a situation that has worsened following the recent surge in global gas prices linked to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Ministers are seeking "concrete commitments" over the next five years to expand funding for the community development financial institution (CDFI) sector, not-for-profit lenders that support businesses unable to secure loans from mainstream banks. The initiative follows a review which found that many small firms are being pushed towards high-cost borrowing because of rising rejection rates, regulatory complexity and broker practices.

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), equipping employees with the latest skills and tools needs to be a priority. After all, as the competition grows, SMEs can't afford to be idle. And it's not always possible for new hires or seasoned employees to know exactly what industry demands will look like. That's why SMEs must budget for upskilling within their workforces.

Last month I sat with the operations manager of a 40-person London firm and watched her spend an entire morning copying order data from one spreadsheet into another. She'd done this every Friday for two years. Nobody had questioned it because that's just how we do things. UK workers waste 11.3 billion hours a year on administrative tasks like emailing, scheduling, and data entry, according to research from Dropbox.

New data released by Start Up Loans, part of the British Business Bank, shows that the Start Up Loans programme has delivered £250 million in lending to more than 25,000 entrepreneurs across London. So far in 2025, 1,500 loans valued at £20m have been taken, illustrating the city's enduring entrepreneurial drive. The data also reveals the capital's top 10 most entrepreneurial boroughs, ranked by volume of loans taken out since 2012.