Barrow-in-Furness registered a total of 383 new businesses in Cumbria last year.

Cumbria reported 2,686 new formations last year, marking an 11.1% increase from 2022, to reach a county total of 23,719 registered companies.

Ahead of Barrow-in-Furness are Carlisle at 704 new ventures, and South Lakeland and Allerdale with 578 and 466 respectively.

These stats were revealed in the Inform Direct Review of Company Formations, compiled from Companies House and Office for National Statistics data.

John Korchak, managing director at Inform Direct, said: "It is excellent news that Cumbria can celebrate a record year for new company formations during 2023.

"The year undoubtedly presented a range of challenges for business including tepid predictions of economic growth, volatility in energy prices and uncertainty from world events.

"However, the formation figures demonstrate very clearly that Cumbria entrepreneurs remained undeterred and pursued their ambitions to establish new ventures."

Mr Korchak also revealed that the UK set a national record; for the first time exceeding 900,000 new company formations in 2023.

The country saw a total of 900,006 new companies last year, compared to 805,141 in 2022, an increase of 11.8%.

This pushed the total number of UK companies to 5,476,772.

Conversely, the number of dissolved companies also rose in 2023 with a total of 662,915 closures, an increase from 578,679 in 2022.