Why investing in Birmingham was a logical step

This blog was written as part of the 2025 Birmingham Economic Review, an annual report produced by University of Birmingham/City-REDI in partnership with the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce. Read the full report.

By Mark Taylor, Birmingham office lead, Bishop Fleming

Bishop Fleming (BF) took the decision to invest in Birmingham in 2024 and opened our doors to a new office on Colmore Row at the start of 2025.

So, what makes Birmingham an attractive investment proposition for a regional accountancy firm such as BF whose first hundred years have focussed primarily on building a business in the South West?

First and foremost, Birmingham is arguably the most important centre for the UK professional services sector outside of London. A claim which is backed by hard data.

With Business, Professional and Financial Services representing a full 35% of Greater Birmingham’s GVA (Birmingham Economic Review 2024) and having grown significantly in recent years (over 20% between 2019 and 2022 according to the same report), the sector is a major local success story and has great scope to continue its impressive march.

Employing 67,000 people in the sector in 2023 (according to Birmingham City Council figures), we have a huge, highly-skilled talent pool fuelled both by the outstanding Higher Education cluster in the region and inward mobility from professionals attracted to the area’s opportunities. Tapping into this resource enables us to boost overall recruitment into BF and find specialist skills that are less available in our other markets.

Naturally, given the region’s well-understood geographic advantages and industry profile, accessibility is also a major draw. Not only accessibility to the significant local economy and the potential for building a new and extensive client base for BF here, but also the excellent road and rail links to the other regions of England and beyond. Once finished, HS2 will be another leap forward in this regard – effectively making Birmingham an outer suburb of London in terms of journey time between the city centres will only fortify the commercial links to this key global marketplace.

Given these attractive characteristics, Birmingham was the next logical step in the expansion of BF, especially given its immediate proximity to our current office network, which previously extended from Truro to Worcester.

What do we hope to achieve here? Well, our immediate five-year plan is to go from one person at the start of 2025 to a team of over one hundred by 2030. Financially, we aim to have revenues here of over £10m in the same timeframe.

And we are not alone… a number of leading accounting, legal and consulting firms have announced new offices in the city in the recent past to support their own drives for growth. These include Crowe, Fieldfisher, Hill Dickinson, PKF Smith Cooper, Ward Hadaway, TLT and Turner & Townsend.

This is an exciting and changing time for the professional services sector generally, with a wave of new – predominantly private equity - investors and much talked about technological developments re-shaping the industry.

As a result of the impact of these forces, the next five to ten years are going to be truly transformative. Given its prominence in the sector, Birmingham is ideally positioned to be at the heart of this evolving landscape and to play a pivotal role in the future, wherever these changes take us.