Surrey named best place for small businesses in Vancouver

A recent report suggest Surrey is the best place in Metro Vancouver to start a small business, based on a number of factors in comparison to the regions other 16 municipalities.

The Vancity Credit Union analysis looked at seven characteristics that impact the success of a small business, including access to population, transportation network, cost of doing business, supply chain, entrepreneurialism, cost of housing and family support. Surprising to many, the areas with the best performance were some of the farthest municipalities from the Downtown core.

While Surrey ranked number one, Richmond, New Westminster, Langley Township and Langley City filled out the top five. At the bottom were the more affluent suburbs of North Vancouver District, White Rock and West Vancouver.

The list rankings seemed to correlate closely with the average cost of housing, with the top and bottom halves of both lists displaying similar results.

Though Surrey was not number one for lowest housing prices, the municipality did score top marks for having a compact supply chain and access to family support.

The City of Vancouver scored the lowest for the cost of doing business, but West Vancouver consistently found itself at the bottom of each list, displaying the highest cost of housing and the lowest access to family support and population. The District did, however, get top marks for entrepreneurialism.

Vancity states there were 382,000 small businesses operating in B.C. in 2014, making up 98 per cent of all businesses in the province and the largest per capita number in Canada. 204,000 of those operations were in Metro Vancouver, and the number is growing.

Of all the different small businesses in the region, the accommodation and food service industry was the largest provider of small business jobs in B.C. between 2008 and 2013.

Small-business friendly municipalities of Metro Vancouver

1. Surrey

2. Richmond

3. New Westminster

4. Langley Township

5. Langley City

6. Maple Ridge

7. Pitt Meadows

8. Port Coquitlam

9. Delta

10. Burnaby

11. North Vancouver City

12. Coquitlam

13. Vancouver

14. Port Moody

15. North Vancouver District

16. White Rock

17. West Vancouver