Celebrating City icon the Sky Garden, crowned world’s most ticketed destination
We are celebrating the best of the Square Mile this October with The Toast Awards! Voting is open now so make your voice heard by submitting your favourite City of London spots on the website. In the run up, we’re honouring some of our favourite City hotspots
Last summer, the City of London’s Sky Garden became one of the world’s most ticketed destinations. As we ramp up towards our Toast the City awards, we think that’s something to celebrate.
The Sky Garden, located at the top of the ‘Walkie Talkie’ building at 20 Fenchurch Street, was completed in 2014 and has since welcomed 11m visitors, with 1m being over the past year.
It comes as new roof terraces and viewing points continue to bring footfall to the Square Mile. The Lookout at 8 Bishopsgate and Horizon 22 at Bishopsgate are the most recent additions. They have welcomed nearly 0.5m people in less than a year.
“The spectacular success of these elevated public spaces show how tall buildings in the City not only provide the high-quality office space we need, but offer benefits to the community and boost the Square Mile’s economic growth and tourist appeal,” chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Planning and Transportation Committee, Shravan Joshi, said when the news was announced about the ticketing record.
As the interest continues to grow, the City of London Corporation has said it plans to bring even more viewing offerings into the mix, including 1 Leadenhall Court, 50 Fenchurch St, Seal House, Millenium Bridge House, and Citicape House in Holborn.
“It’s particularly encouraging to see school children and local communities enjoying the spaces, giving them a feeling of belonging to, and involvement in, the City, its environment, and history,” Joshi said.
The Sky Garden features restaurants as well as a bar and outdoor viewing terrace, open subject to weather conditions.
Visitors can visit the Sky Garden free of charge to take in the views from the rooftop atrium, and there are indoor gardens to wander between and take photos. It’s best to book the restaurants ahead of time.
Our Toast the City awards in October celebrate the best of the City. You can currently vote for your favourite restaurant, bar, coffee shop, public space or cultural institution on the website before our selection of judges whittle the nominations down into a short list. Judges include Michelin starred chef Tom Sellers and Fallow and Roe restaurateur James Robson.
Find out which venues are crowned best in the Square Mile in October.
Toast the City website material reads: “The City of London is a thriving hub for some of London’s most innovative restaurants, bars and cultural projects. The Toast the City Awards 2025 will recognise the institutions new and old – and the men and women behind them – that have helped build the Square Mile into one of the most vibrant areas of London, for workers and visitors alike
“We have enrolled some of the biggest names in hospitality to pick the very best pubs, restaurants, entertainment hot-spots, sandwich shops and outdoor spaces, all nominated by our readers. We will recognise the best-of-the-best and throughout the year we’ll be featuring interviews and profiles with nominees.”
Einkvan at The Coronet: Jon Fosse play is appropriately gruelling
Einkvan | Coronet Theatre | ★★★★☆
“You don’t read my books for the plots,” Jon Fosse once said. The same is true of his theatre: His play Einkvan (Everyman) at The Coronet explores familiar ideas: doubles, grief, atomisation, fishing and painting, existentialism. Einkvan is particularly interested in the excruciating feeling of isolation, one that’s experienced despite the presence of others, clawing at your insides.
A hospital ward-esque, translucent curtain renders the actors shadows for the entirety of the production. They are filmed live onto two large screens directly above the stage, on which intense facial shots judder, uncomfortably close-up at grotesque angles.
Performed in Norwegian with English surtitles, six characters – a father, mother, son, and their three doppelgängers – attempt to communicate but, despite occasional glimmers of hope, their words never reach beyond their doubles. The father and mother make increasingly desperate pleas to the son, who does not want to be found – he’s hiding in a bathtub with his own doppelgänger, who is also his lover. Their faces contort with pain, blinding in their proximity. We would normally look away but Fosse forces us not to.
“There has to be a reason,” the son says in a lengthy monologue at the beginning. A reason for living. Later he will ask: do we exist if we are alone?
Fosse, who won a Nobel prize in 2023, has a style that is perhaps better suited to the written word, where the rhythmic, repetitive lull of his language laps at the reader like waves. The script reflects Fosse’s characteristic lack of punctuation or capital letters (in Septology, there is not one full stop throughout the entire trilogy), with the three characters speaking in repetitive patterns, although it is somewhat less successful on stage. The intense emotional world his characters inhabit is all consuming but it’s hard to accumulate as much empathy in just one hour of theatre.
By the final third of the play, every time the mother or father asks where the son is, you want to shout at them to ‘LET IT GO!’ But of course, we often cannot let things go. Our inner monologues often are repetitive. We get stuck on the same points, unable to escape. You suspect the characters could do with some serious CBT.
The immediacy of the live film footage makes this a gruelling experience. When the mother says “I don’t know how much more of this I can take”, you’re right there with her. Einkvan is excruciating stuff – but then so is human suffering.
The Brightening Air: Unbearably tense and brilliantly acted
After seeing The Brightening Air at the Old Vic, I left the theatre with the overwhelming urge to seize control of my own destiny. It follows an extended family as they prepare to meet after a long time apart. The occasion: the birthday of the blind ex-clergyman Father Pierre. It is a play in which everybody yearns: for love, money, or a certain something that remains elusive…
Loosely based on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya – playwright Conor McPherson (The Girl from the North Country) says the play is “haunted by” Chekov’s masterpiece – The Brightening Air is brimming with questions, the most urgent being: what kind of life is worth living? Characters question each other’s life choices: ‘What is your dream?’ they ask earnestly. Nobody has any answers.
It’s a family drama that revolves around three siblings: Dermot, Stephen and Billie, the latter two still living in the decaying family farmhouse. Dermot has his own family but is hellbent on tearing it apart. Uncle Pierre, meanwhile, is accompanied by a woman who is his wife in all but the essential activities, if you know what I mean. Each one is deeply dissatisfied with their lot.
Like Chekov, McPherson is at his best when conjuring up fraught relationships, and in this play’s most thrilling moments, the audience is drawn into an intense emotional bubble, its characters expanding and contracting with the tension. At times it’s almost unbearable, a sign of McPherson’s talents.
Unlike Chekov, The Brightening Air is also imbued with mythic qualities and the odd dose of actual magic. McPherson says the play is drenched in folklore; I’d describe it as more spattered, the symbolism somehow feeling both too on the nose and rather nonsensical.
The godfearing masses are described as ‘ignorant minions of the dark,’ and the three sneering siblings are branded ‘Cheshire cu**ts’
A case in point: Dermot’s estranged wife Lydia is desperate to get her hands on some magic water that will make the recipient fall in love with her. She wants to use it on her unfaithful husband, who turns up to the family gathering with his new, young girlfriend Freya. Lydia cannot let her husband go, despite the audience willing her to release herself from Dermot’s spell and settle down with his brother, Joe, who is clearly in love with her. Whether Lydia is indeed under a spell or whether she is simply incapable of changing her mind is left to the audience.
In the second half, Father Pierre abruptly regains his sight – was he lying for sympathy all along? Or has he been blessed by God? “I can see you all,” he says profoundly. Yet he hasn’t come to any great revelation. The effect of these unexplained magical qualities muddy the waters of what would have been more successful as a realist play.
It is nevertheless a brilliantly acted, incredibly smooth production from a gifted playwright. Rosie Sheeny is hilarious as the train station-obsessed, plain-talking younger sibling Billie. Chris O’Dowd is devilishly funny as the alcoholic, unfaithful Dermot, while Hannah Morrish gives a forlorn and credible performance as his long-suffering wife, Lydia. At times it’s very funny, too. The godfearing masses are described as “ignorant minions of the dark,” and the three sneering siblings are branded “Cheshire cu**ts” (I’ll be nabbing that one for sure).
McPherson describes the theatre as “a pagan church where we watch an eternal story play out upon the altar”. But there’s no obvious moral lesson to be learned from The Brightening Air. Still, it left me feeling strangely energised. To hell with fatalism and unrequited love. Let’s throw out all the myths. And I suppose, judged upon this, McPherson’s play is really quite successful.
• Book tickets here for The Brightening Air at the Old Vic
Life on the edge: A deep dive into the crazy world of Margate
Five years ago, some dilapidated public urinals in a park in Margate were sold at auction by the council to a private bidder for £11,000. The shabby little structure is barely visible from the path, a graffitied block hidden behind shrubs with weeds winding through the roof and floor. The original glazed urinals are exposed and crumbling. For half a decade, the former loos have languished.
“It’s the county’s strangest listed building,” says Margate local John Cripps. “Firstly it’s a toilet, and secondly it’s derelict. Why would you buy something and then just leave it?”
Welcome to the UK’s strangest town. Labelled one of the most deprived coastal regions in the country by the Office for National Statistics in 2010, Margate has since undergone a dramatic transformation, illustrated by the various new titles bestowed upon it: Shoreditch-by-Sea, Hackney Bay, Camden-by-Sea, and even the ‘polyamory capital of the UK’. In 2022, the Cliftonville area of Margate was named Time Out’s ‘Eighth coolest neighbourhood in the world’.
In a sign of the times, the urinals are finally being converted into – what else? – a coffee shop, a project that pledges to preserve the list-worthy decorative metal panels. It’s another win for the hipsters, who already stand accused of hijacking the coastal town.
Last month local punk band CRABS released a track entitled Make Margate Shit Again, cheekily bemoaning the town’s gentrification. Choice lines include:
I miss the days when Dreamland was shuttered / Bring back drunks face down in the gutter
And:
At least we could afford to pay the rent / Instead of heading to the beach and pitching a tent
And it’s not just locals who are mad: Margate’s transformation has irked the nation more than just about anywhere else. But why the vitriol? Academic Phil Hubbard, who wrote the book Borderlands, writes that Kent’s coast is often seen as an imagined battleground where our national myths are played out: our relationship with foreigners, our national identity, our values. If Margate is changing, what does it mean?
•••
“People get Margate so wrong,” Aly tells me. She says the independent bookshop where she works is essentially “Margate’s unofficial tourist board” and she spends hours discussing the place. The bookshop was opened in 2019 by a woman who moved to Margate from Mile End, making her a typical DFL – Down From Londoner – an acronym and identity with which all of Margate is familiar. That is to say: Hipsters (“I hate the H word,” hisses Aly). Margate seems to hold a romantic appeal for lost Londoners, she says. “People just kind of wash up here, in a coastal town. But when you come to a small place like this, you can’t escape yourself.”
The Margate Bookshop is a small Georgian building in the Market Square of the Old Town, which is the pinnacle of gentrified Margate. Queer, anti-colonial, translated and other modern books fill the shelves. A notice board advertises community events: life drawing classes, ‘breathwork’ sessions, a story club “championing diverse picture books” for children, pregnancy yoga and “Steph’s supper club” (£35pp, excluding drinks).
Originally from Canterbury, Aly moved here several years ago via East Dulwich. “It’s impossible to describe Margate without saying things like, edgy,” she says, wincing for comic effect. “Edgy” could in this case refer to the crime rate (one of the highest of any UK town, particularly for drugs and violent and sexual offences), the many boarded up shops on the high street or the dilapidated buildings. It does not apply to the bookshop, which is endearingly twee.
•••
“You can only afford to live in Margate now if you work remotely or if you’re a tradesperson or maybe if you own a local business,” Charlotte tells me over a late afternoon hot chocolate in Turkish bakery-diner Olimpia. She has lived here all her life and works for her dad’s company, which fixes lifts. Charlotte says her property, bought a few years ago, has gone up in value by more than £100,000. Over the last decade house prices in Margate have doubled, although they have plateaued in the last 12 months. People Charlotte went to school with have been priced out. How does she feel about it all?
“What, you mean the gentrification? I don’t mind it, really. It means there are new cocktail bars and places that are more my scene now. I go out and I’ll meet someone from New Zealand, or the Netherlands, and I’m like ‘Why would you want to come here!’ The roads feel less sketchy than when I was a child. I had a boyfriend who used to tell me to run if anyone approached us walking along Northdown Road in the evening.”
The artist Tracey Emin remembers Margate as a “no-go zone” in the 1980s, when she was raped in the town as a young girl. Now Northdown Road has some of the town’s trendiest spots, places like artisan bakery Oust. Close by, the Good Egg, a posh brunch spot stands next to THANET TASTY CHICKEN, which is in turn next to the Christian Book Centre. It looks a bit like Kingsland Road but with more methadone clinics and fewer Vietnamese restaurants.
Charlotte grew up in Margate in the 1990s and noughties, at the height of its erosion. Like many seaside towns, it has been on a ride. The OG seaside town, it became famous due to its accessibility by steamboat from London during the 17th and 18th century, when sea air and sea swimming were very much in vogue. The swanky swim-and-sun resort was home to the first roller coaster in the UK and the first donkey ride along the coast. In 1863, when the train station was commissioned, the town was full of boarding houses and swanky hotels.
But then: The Storm. All Margaters know about The Storm. It hit in 1953, destroying most of the beachside infrastructure. It is the reason Margate, unlike most British coastal towns, is missing a pier. It doesn’t even have a ruined one – it had fully disintegrated by 1998. The catastrophe, along with the dawn of cheap foreign package holidays, sent Margate to the bottom of the list of aspirational travel destinations.
Margate seems to hold a romantic appeal for lost Londoners. People just kind of wash up here, in a coastal town. But when you come to a small place like this, you can’t escape yourself.
Ironically, the weight of Margate’s past sometimes holds it back. Attempts to preserve its history – especially its listed buildings – have tended to “limit the growth of modern infrastructure and resulted in a lack of housing,” according to Gemma Collins, who wrote a recent paper comparing the fates of Margate and Glasgow.
This happened with Dreamland, the amusement park that was set to be converted to modern offices and flats in 1993. A year before work was due to begin, the Scenic Railway was designated a Grade II listed building. This marked the first time in history a ride was given listed status, halting the redevelopment. In this case the developers saved themselves some money: in 2008, an arsonist set it on fire.
Margate “hasn’t seen the support from the national government that big cities have,” according to former mayor Rob Yates. Indeed, the idea and funding for the town’s flagship attraction, the Turner Contemporary art gallery, was led by Kent County Council. The Turner opened in 2011, bringing arty tourists from London and further afield, and ever since Margate’s fortunes have changed. The Turner Gallery alone generated almost £68m for the local economy in 2019. A new, faster train line opened and DFLs flooded in. Gentrification took hold. TS Eliot’s bus shelter, where he wrote part of The Wasteland – On Margate Sands / I can connect nothing with nothing – was recently refurbished.
From 2011 to 2021, Margate had the highest rise in house prices of all the UK’s coastal towns. Yates, worried that local people couldn’t afford to stay in their homes, proposed letting limits and planning restrictions on Airbnbs, which many DFLs blame for the housing problems (rather than blaming themselves). Fortuitous cards have not been dealt evenly: Cliftonville West and Margate Central remain the most economically deprived neighbourhoods in Kent, and are within the most deprived 10 per cent in the UK.
Margate is also a place of political conflict. Thanet District Council was famously a UKIP heartland, although last year the town elected its first Labour MP in 20 years. A recent clash between left and right saw locals successfully block the removal of asylum seekers to the controversial Bibby Stockholm floating ‘processing centre’ in Portsmouth by lying in the road. The protest ultimately prompted the Home Office to rescind their decision to send 22 men, mostly from Afghanistan, to the barge.
•••
At an old morgue in the heart of Margate, I meet David, a chef at The Perfect Place To Grow. A humble man with large, kind eyes, he greets me outside the arched annexe; a Tracey Emin neon sign flickers behind us. He introduces me to the three youths in the kitchen that afternoon: Bradley, Bradley and Lyra, all wearing aprons and making meringues.
They are part of a project that aims to help NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) get a foothold in the jobs market. David used to work in London as a chef but fell into poor mental health and spent time sleeping rough. He got help and trained to become a councillor.
You can tell Lyra’s a good cook. She’s obsessed with a £15,000 monster pressure cooker that can make 25 litres of spaghetti bolognese in one go. “I want one in my house one day!” Lyra’s dream is to open a bakery in Italy, so David helped get her a placement at an Italian bakery in town, with funding from Thanet Council.
“When we do an initial assessment, we ask potential trainees, ‘Do you feel part of your community?’ And most of them don’t even know what that means. They really don’t,” says David. Last summer, Emin invited the team at The Perfect Place to Grow down to the White Cube in Bermondsey – one of the chicest art galleries in London – to cater for the opening night of her new exhibition.
The Perfect Place to Grow is located between a new block of flats called Emin Court and TKE Studios (the Tracey K Emin artist studios). I knew she was a big presence, but I didn’t know quite how big. Emin presides over Margate like a feudal lord of the manor. If you sit in a (gentrified) cafe, the person sitting next to you may well turn out to be one of her proteges (this actually happened to me).
The creator of provocative and confessional artworks such as Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With, You Keep Fucking Me and the infamous My Bed (literally her bed, after having spent a few days shagging, eating, drinking and sleeping in it), she is worth an estimated $15 million. As such, she can afford to do things like buy up an old gentlemen’s club on a whim in a bid to stop it being turned into a nightclub (it later transpired the roof was caving in).
She is also the patron of The Perfect Place to Grow, whose website reads: “None of this would be possible without our amazing friend,” under a large portrait of Emin, as if she were the town saint. After making her name in London, the artist moved back to Margate (from Shoreditch) in 2017 after suffering from cancer. She has become a diligent local campaigner and patron of the arts. The sea air is filled with gossip about her: “She owns 80 per cent of the property here,” speculates a musician, who wishes to remain anonymous (no one wants to be caught bad-mouthing Tracey).
One problem I encounter, as a temporary DFL, is that if you’re a late night drinker, Margate’s pubs and bars close early (even earlier than London). Or, if it’s a Wednesday, they are likely not open at all. So it is not by choice that I end up at Lido Pool Bar at the edge of the town, by the sea. It sells Kit Kats and Neck Oil with suspiciously printed-out and laminated labels. A game of pool costs 50p. It is a real mix of DFLs and Margate lifers, groups that otherwise tend to operate in silos. It’s also extremely weird: indescribable scenes are plastered over the walls: howling demons, smug flat-capped men, and what looks like… uh, the Louvre? If you look up close, the images are heavily pixellated. “The Sistine Chapel!” my new friends cry. “We love it!” They argue over whether the wallpaper has changed recently. “It’s not wallpaper, it’s art,” says the owner Neville.
Around the corner in a spacious room near the Old Town, Danny Romeril, a man with mutton chops and a green cap, is holding an exhibition. Originally from Jersey, he and his partner moved from Camberwell to Margate to buy a property a couple of years ago. It was during Covid that they got the idea. More space, the sea. He doesn’t miss London. The exhibition – an odd combination of sketches, small sculptures and grand oil paintings – is called Jumble.
Romeril loves it here. “If you like bad weather, this is the perfect place,” he grins, describing the regular 40 mile an hour winds with genuine affection. He doesn’t think Margate’s problems – a rental crisis, gentrification, deprivation – are Margate’s alone; in fact they are Britain’s problems. But if you get the media calling Margate the eighth coolest neighbourhood in the world, he says, then of course you’ll create some false expectations.
•••
To jumble is a process of mixing things up in a disordered way, according to Romeril’s display notes. Is Margate a jumble? In a way yes, but it’s also carefully ordered and socially coded to prevent jumbling. Certain cafes are for certain people. Curve, for example, sells kimchi cheese toasties for £10, as well as ground coffee and various merch, all reading ‘Curve’, as if the place you buy a latte describes your whole personality. Which, in a way, it does.
People who go to Curve do not go to Charlie’s, a seafront restaurant that currently has a 50% OFF ALL FOOD offer advertised in the window. If you walk up from the Old Town, the slant of the windows has the unfortunate effect of squeezing the letters together so that it reads: 50% OFFAL. Nor do they go to The ODDS Club, which I’m told has a tendency to turn away the DFL crowd.
It’s at Curve I meet Ryan, a pub manager and novelist in his forties who hails from the Outer Hebrides. He tells me he’s a “walking cliche”: he and his partner moved here from Hackney after Covid. He, too, thinks The Media gets Margate wrong. “A lot of Old Town is owned by people who bought here in the 1980s for nothing, people who don’t even live here. It’s too easy to blame incomers [for rental increases]. It’s the landlords who are to blame. People often call it Hackney-Meets-Sea, or Shoreditch-by-Sea, which is so lazy, you know? All healthy communities should have art galleries, community spaces and places where people go to share ideas and enjoy culture.”
Ryan says that by spending his money in local restaurants, venues and shops, and working in Margate (in his case as the general manager of The George and Heart pub), he is participating in a circular economy. It reminds me of Aly’s observation that Margate attracts people who are looking for community while also running away from something.
•••
Arlington House, a gigantic brutalist tower block in the centre of town, divides the people of Margate. You can’t miss it: it’s a vast monument to 1970s excess, entirely out of character with the rest of the town but not without its modernist charms. Whichever way you lean, it has the slightly sinister energy of a neolithic obelisk. From outside, it appears deserted. The only indicators of life are little details like an anti-Putin banner on a mid-floor window, and even that looks washed out and faded. Crisp packets blow in the blustery Margate wind across its wide, empty paths. It’s an unlikely totem for a small-town rebellion.
But one night last November, a Thanet District Council planning meeting erupted into cheers over Arlington House. Councillors had just voted unanimously against a recommendation to replace its windows. A campaign headed by – of course – Tracey Emin had won. “If Arlington House had been in London or any major city, it would have been protected and listed as an outstanding building,” she said last year.
The leaseholder had planned to replace the windows, which “rattle and shake”, with a new design. Artsy folk, architectural charities like the C20 Society and flat owners including Emin, protested. The windows had been specifically designed to give each flat both a sea and inland view, they argued. They are part of Margate’s heritage. Some residents fought back, citing the staggering energy bills they accrue due to the single glazing.
The aesthetic of the flats within Arlington House change drastically from floor to floor. On one it might be run-down and deprived, while another will be full of freshly decorated units complete with mid-century furniture and all the trappings of middle-class life. A local historian is said to have decorated their flat in period 1960s style. In a way, Arlington House is reflective of Margate as a whole: gentrified and falling down, a vision of both the past and the future, an extreme example of Britain’s deepening inequalities.
UK nightclubs are ‘more concerned now than during the pandemic’
The UK’s nightclub sector has been hit with an alarming decline in activity as it continues to battle “unsustainable” cost pressures following the Autumn Budget’s tax hikes.
Fresh figures from the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) have today revealed there has been a 32.7 per cent decline in activity since 2020 amid what is seen as a “deeply fragile” state of recovery.
The latter months of 2024 saw a slight uptick in hope for London and the North East, but a majority of regions and cities across the nation struggled.
London, which saw the smallest decline, witnessed a 19.7 per cent decrease from March 2020 to November 2024.
Manchester saw a decrease of 33.3 per cent, while Birmingham topped the charts with a drop of 38.5 per cent.
Some UK regions, such as central, faced declines upwards of 39.6 per cent.
Michael Kill, chief executive of the NTIA, said the policies implemented in this year’s worrying Autumn Budget have only increased fears within a sector that needs more support.
NTIA’s research also revealed a majority of those in the sector have begun to face 30 to 40 per cent higher operational costs compared to pre-pandemic levels.
“While we’ve seen some recovery during the golden quarter, the reality is that our sector is still deeply fragile,” Kill said.
He added: “We’ve already lost hundreds of businesses across the night time economy, who are struggling with unsustainable cost increases, including soaring energy prices and significant increases in wages, NICs, and duties.”
Nightclubs call for support
The NTIA has warned these financial burdens could cause a number of businesses to consider closing, with many already “working on fine margins” and having “exhausted all possible avenues to cut costs”.
As a result, the group has urged the Government to implement tax relief and VAT cuts during this year’s Spring Budget.
Kill added: “The uncertainty heading into 2025 is more concerning than anything we saw during the pandemic.
“The Chancellor must step up with considered support to help businesses survive and protect jobs.
“The long term strategy rhetoric is important, but there must be a recognition and consideration for the immediate challenges, which are substantial, as we risk further closures and job losses. This environment for many is unsustainable.”
Start-up boom or doom? How this year could spark the UK’s business appetite
For many, the new year is a time to celebrate leaving the stress of our past behind – kickstarting a number of resolutions designed to spark a sense of optimism in the months ahead.
But that sense of hopefulness can only last for so long when the dreaded sense of reality soon finds its way back to us. Alas, it might have already for some, and especially in the world of business.
The nation’s entrepreneurs have, without a doubt, been put to the test over the past few years.
Brexit-imposed regulatory hurdles, pandemic-induced cost pressures, political instability and an overall sluggish economy, the seemingly never-ending list continues.
Naturally, the start-up community found itself hoping for more in 2024. But unfortunately, with the latest post-Budget jitters dominating the headlines, some of that hope was lost.
The sense of certainty Britain was longing for was far, far from achieved.
So, will the year 2025 be one for start-ups to finally thrive? Or will they once again find themselves struggling to survive?
Challenges ahead
A recent Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) survey found an alarming number of businesses have becoming increasingly concerned baout the future of the UK’s workforce under the new Labour government’s employment reforms.
Labour’s employment overhaul was laid out in October with 28 individual measures in the Bill, including ending exploitative zero-hour contracts and banning fire and rehire tactics.
Of the 1,270 small employers surveyed, 67 per cent had said they plan to halt recruitment efforts in fear of these changes, with 32 per cent planning to reduce current headcount as well.
Over half of those employers also said they feel the need to cancel or scale back investment on expansion plans due to the looming cost pressures that could follow.
These worries don’t even begin to paint the bigger picture. Needless to say, the Autumn Budget was not a start-up’s best friend.
There will be a long road ahead for those looking to avoid collapse under the heavy weight of tax hikes, including the implications of a rise in employers’ National Insurance Contributions (NICs), minimum wage allowance, Business Property Relief (BPR) and business rates.
Joanna Jensen, serial entrepreneur and founder of family skincare brand Childs Farm, is one of many who believe the nation must “grease the wheels of business again”.
A start-up’s recipe for survival under these kinds of pressures, she says, will come down to whether the founder is resilient and ambitious enough to succeed.
“If you are following a strategy that’s not working, don’t be afraid to pivot and try something different,” Jensen adds.
“Willingness to adapt sets apart those businesses that succeed and those that fail.”
While only “the most robust and resilient” might survive these post-Budget blues, the UK seems to have at least one thing going for it: an appetite for risk.
An appetite for risk
Small business support platform Enterprise Nation’s annual Start Up Ambition Report revealed there has been a 12 per cent increase in UK adults looking to start their own ventures this year.
One of the main drivers is of course to make some extra cash as a way to keep up with rising costs. Others, however, have decided it’s simply time to start to monetise the hobby they already find themselves involved in.
“What’s behind this is a decade of wage stagnation – people want to increase their income while doing something they love or are good at,” Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, said.
“But it’s also about the accessibility of technology and good quality business support that helps people to get started and grow.”
Indeed, a number of technological advancements have changed the way start-ups have been able to hit the ground running in recent years. Some might even say it’s easier to start a business today than ever before.
“What we’re witnessing is nothing short of a cultural shift,” Jones added.
“The number of people who want to start a business just keeps on expanding every year, it’s incredible.”
Greggs: Sausage roll-maker passes two milestones despite ‘subdued’ footfall
Greggs reported a record-breaking year in 2024 as the sausage-roll maker surpassed two key milestones, but warned on headwinds in 2025 after “subdued” footfall.
In an update to markets today, the high street bakery reported an 11.2 per cent uptick in total sales, which sprung the company upwards of its sales milestone of £2bn.
However, shares have since tumbled by nine per cent today, reflecting growing caution for a turbulent year ahead.
During the fourth quarter, total sales were up 7.7 per cent while like-for-like sales were slightly lower, up 2.5 per cent. This could be due to Brits winding down for the festive period, and going into the office less.
The group also opened a record 226 new shops throughout 2024, however, 28 closures and relocation took that number to a total of 145 “net new shop openings”.
This has put Greggs in line with its previously revealed target of operating 3,500 stores across the UK. As of 28 December, there were 2,618 shops actively trading.
Looking ahead, Greggs plans to continue momentum, with a range of 140-150 new openings and 50 targeted relocations in 2025.
“We enter 2025 with a strong pipeline of new shop opportunities, and we continue to broaden our menu and enhance our digital capabilities, whilst also developing our supply chain capacity to deliver our growth strategy,” chief executive Roisin Currie said.
The firm has also continued to win over customers by keeping prices low and ramping up evening trade.
Currie added: “Whilst lower consumer confidence continues to impact high street footfall and expenditure, our value-for-money offer and the quality of our freshly-prepared food and drink position us well to meet the headwinds we expect to see in the year ahead.”
Caution ahead
Greggs also said its cash position of £125m was down on last year’s £195m reflecting “investment in growth and capacity” after opening more stores.
The company warned that “despite growth in disposable incomes, consumer confidence was subdued in the second half of 2024 and this weighed on industry-wide customer visits and expenditure.”
John Moore, senior investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said today’s figures highlight that Greggs witnessed a tougher trading period than expected in the second half of 2024.
He added: “There is notable caution in terms of rising employment costs and wider inflation – both of which will likely impact the shares today.
“Nonetheless, Greggs has proven its ability to navigate tricky times in the past and, with cash on its balance sheet, great brand awareness, and an entrepreneurial management team, there are reasons to be optimistic despite the headwinds.”
The femtech revolution is just getting started – but who are the real winners?
What is so revolutionary about femtech? A once-niche term that, since coined by entrepreneur Ida Tin in 2016, has become synonymous with the future of healthcare and technology.
The concept quickly struck a chord with the broader healthtech landscape, tapping into an underserved market for women’s health.
The industry has witnessed exponential growth over the last decade, and looking ahead, that momentum seems stronger than ever.
The global femtech market was valued at around $51bn (£41bn) in 2021, and is projected to hit a valuation of over $177bn (£143bn) by 2032.
Just last year, Flo Health, the world’s most popular digital menstruation tracker, became Europe’s first ever femtech unicorn – hitting a pre-money valuation of $1bn.
The UK-based company was founded in 2015 by two Belarusian brothers, Dmitry and Yuri Gurski, and has since generated a worldwide user base of more than 380m.
A number of other challenger brands have found themselves benefiting from the boom.
Elvie, the London-based femtech company founded in 2013, recently raised £9.6m, bringing its eight-funding-round total to £136m.
Is it finally getting the attention it deserves?
While this year’s eye-catching numbers have piqued interest in the sector – further sparking the conversations many have been hoping for – the industry has not gone without its fair share of challenges.
A McKinsey Health Institute analysis found that 11 start-ups focused on erectile dysfunction received $1.2bn (£0.96bn) from 2019 to 2023, while only eight start-ups addressing endometriosis (a condition affecting a female’s uterus affecting one in ten women) received $44m (£35m).
Concerns have also surfaced surrounding the narrative that investors prefer to allocate their capital to male-founded femtech teams – a controversy recently coming to light due the success of the male-founded Flo Health’s latest fundraise of over $200m (£160m).
According to Sifted, female-founded femtechs raised $4.6m on average between 2018 and 2023, compared to $9.2m by femtechs founded by all-male teams.
This discrepancy is all the more striking considering the outcomes for female and male-led start-ups: studies have revealed female-led tech businesses generate 35 per cent higher returns than male-led businesses, according to the Kaufman Foundation.
A lack of understanding
Some say this stark difference has stemmed from investors’ lack of understanding, says Hannah Samano, founder of women’s health platform Unfabled.
Especially when it comes to the “historically fragmented” women’s health market as a whole, with few holistic firms in the sector.
Emma Abbasi, founder of femtech start-up Dearbump, however, says despite the controversy, “areas like menopause, fertility, and maternal health are finally getting the attention they need”.
“Investors are beginning to see how big the market for women’s health really is, and they’re putting money into solutions like health tracking apps, AI-powered tools, and new treatments that meet women’s specific needs,” Abbasi adds.
The market for menopause products, for example, is projected to grow at a rate of five per cent per year, reaching $24.4bn by 2030, according to a report by Global Information. The market was worth $15.33bn in 2023.
Femtech in 2025
Advancements in technology have defined the last year and upended a number of industries, and that momentum shows no sign of slowing down.
Samano – who founded her women’s data-driven consumer health platform Unfabled in 2021 – says AI will be what supercharges the shift towards a number of growth opportunities this year.
These include the likes of preventative health, data personalisation, and community-driven care.
“Consumers are demanding tailored solutions, and leveraging data to deliver personalisation – whether in menstrual health, menopause, or fertility – will be a key driver of innovation,” she says.
“Advances in AI are accelerating this shift, enabling more accurate insights and building new datasets that help us uncover and address women’s unmet health needs in ways we’ve never been able to before.”
“Advances in AI are accelerating this shift, enabling more accurate insights and building new datasets that help us uncover and address women’s unmet health needs in ways we’ve never been able to before.”
As technological advancements both encourage and benefit from a reduction in the stigmatization of women’s health issues like menopause and fertility, Dearbump’s Abbasi also envisages the rise of femtech and wellness in the workplace.
Employers, she says, are “recognising the value of supporting employees through reproductive health and family planning”.
Time to invest?
The UK tops the charts as the country with the largest female health gap in the G20, according to the NHS confederation, with women in Britain spending three more years in “ill health and disability” than men.
And it’s an iniquity with economic as well as social consequences. Based on analysis of 2023 ONS data, the impact of missed work due to a number of women’s health issues sees an economic loss range of £2.2bn to £3.7bn a year.
Nearly 60,000 women in the UK are unemployed due to menopause symptoms, for example, which has resulted in a loss of £1.5bn.
Debbie Wosskow, co-founder of supplements brand The Better Menopause, seems confident the sector will prevail.
She even goes so far as to suggest there will be a “significant” rise in venture capital “as investors recognise this market’s enormous potential for growth and innovation”.
Wosskow also co-chairs the Invest in Women Taskforce, which has launched a funding pot of more than £250m for female-founded businesses, one of the world’s largest investment pools for female businesses.
“I also predict further partnerships and acquisitions between femtech start-ups and established healthcare providers… There is investment there for femtech start-ups as confidence grows in the sector,” she says.
The sector’s growth and increasing ubiquity, she adds, will also create a self-reinforcing process: “As awareness increases, so does demand for effective solutions… Women want science-driven solutions that really work.”
B&M: Festive season of bargain shopping helps ‘undistracted’ value retailer
Value retailer B&M Bargains reported strong revenue growth throughout the golden quarter as consumers sought out low-discount options to meet their festive shopping needs.
However, the caution imposed by a challenging environment ahead for the retail sector due to tax hikes and employment costs caused B&M shares to fall by 8.5 per cent today.
In a third quarter trading update to markets today, the Liverpool-based firm, which includes Heron Foods, said group revenue was up 3.5 per cent year-on-year.
That number fell for B&M’s UK arm alone, however, with only a 2.8 per cent growth for the 13-week period between 29 September and 28 December 2024.
B&M’s bargain supermarket chain Heron Foods was also down 5.6 per cent, despite the group’s chief executive Alex Russo ensuring the business “remains undistracted by the current economic headlines.”
A continued uptick in overall revenue, as also highlighted in a trading update in November, could be a sign consumers haven’t fully recovered from the cost-of-living crisis and are still seeking out cheaper goods.
Russo said: “Our operating model is well set up to give customers exceptional value when they need it most.
“Pricing, availability, store standards and a disciplined opening programme will underpin positive volume growth across our ranges.”
The positive momentum was most seen within B&M France amid a quarterly growth of 12.5 per cent.
B&M also declared a £151m special dividend of 15.0p per ordinary share. The ex-dividend date is set for 16 January, with further returns set to be finalised in the new financial year.
Challenges ahead
David Hughes, research analyst at Shore Capital, believes the next year might be tough for the retailer.
“Overall, while the business has once again delivered on growth and showcased its high cash generation, it remains a challenging retail environment,” Hughes said.
He added: “Non-food deflation coupled with the wage and National Insurance cost increases expected in Spring will likely put pressure on margins, while growth remains dependant on new store roll outs.”
The bargain retailer, however, announced the lowering of its previously disclosed profit guidance, now expecting it to be in the range of £620m to £650m.
“Our strategy is clear – we are an everyday low-price discounter with a laser-focus in keeping excellence in retail standards and our costs the lowest,” Russo said.
He added: “This allows us to drive volumes by offering our best-selling products at exceptional value to every customer.
“Through this volume growth, and with our leading return on capital business model, we continue to generate profit and cash returns for our shareholders.”
New year, new beginnings
B&M opened 39 new stores in the first half of the year, bringing its total to 764. It said it aims to operate 1,200 UK stores.
However, the year has still proved tough for the bargain retailer amongst a number of pressure on incomes and higher tax burdens.
Euan Sutherland is set to become a non-executive director at the Liverpool-headquartered company from 20 January, 2025, subject to shareholder approval.
If appointed, Sutherland will also join the remuneration and nomination committees.
Mamas & Papas: Nursery brand reveals latest expansion amid record sales
The festive season provided yet another boost in sales for high street nursery brand Mamas & Papas following a bumper year of trade thanks to the success of its deals with M&S and Next.
The Huddersfield-headquartered firm today reported record sales during this year’s Golden Quarter, especially within its UK and overseas markets.
It said it has a further 20 locations planned in the new year “to help it tap into growing demand for its branded ranges”.
Group sales were up five per cent in the 12 weeks to 29 December, with retail sales also seeing a boost of eight per cent. That number climbed to 13 per cent during the week of Black Friday.
The company’s market share also hit a record high, peaking at 20 per cent in November.
“This was another record golden quarter for the brand, with a particularly strong contribution from our bricks and mortar estate,” Nathan Williams, chief executive of Mamas & Papas, said.
Williams added: “We’re also seeing a growing momentum from our overseas business, where we’ve laid excellent foundations over the past 18 months with several key partners in our core markets.
“This is an important area of expansion for our brand over the next 12 months as demand for our high-quality baby and nursery products continues to grow.”
Mamas & Papas expands yet again
In November, Mamas & Papas posted a revenue of £154.3m for the 12 months to 31 March 2024, up from the £144.1m it achieved in the prior year.
It said its revenue was boosted by sales across its 36 concessions with M&S and Next, jumping by 48 per cent thanks to six additional destinations as well as the full-year sales impact from 15 new locations opened in the previous year.
The brand’s ambitious international expansion plan also saw it opening 29 overseas stores over the past year and a half.
Williams added: “Whilst the macroeconomic situation continues to weigh heavily on consumer sentiment, the enduring strength of the nursery and baby category and the growing presence of our brand in the UK and overseas gives us a lot of confidence in the year ahead.
“Meanwhile our growing data capabilities mean we’re better able to tailor support for new and expectant parents and be even more helpful at critical points of their pregnancy journey.”