If you want to see where the UK accountancy profession is shrinking fastest, look at the capital.
Our analysis shows London lost 1,855 accountancy firms between 2019 and 2025. That’s a 16.3% drop. One in six of the capital’s firms, gone in six years.
To put that in context, the whole of the UK lost 3,745 firms over the same period. London accounts for nearly half the national decline on its own.
The regional divide is stark
Every southern region lost firms, while parts of the north actually grew.
Here's the twist: London's clients didn't leave
You might assume firms are disappearing because London's business scene is struggling. The data says otherwise.
London's total business population grew 3.1% over the same six years. The clients are still there. In fact, there are more of them. It's the supply of accountancy firms that collapsed, and the evidence points to three forces doing the damage.
The first is consolidation, and it's concentrated in the capital. London firms are the prize targets in the private equity wave sweeping the profession. Crowe reports that up to 20 of the UK's top 60 firms are now PE-backed, and the landmark deals are London stories: Cinven's investment in Grant Thornton UK, Apax buying Evelyn Partners' professional services arm, and Waterland's investment in Moore Kingston Smith, the London member of the Moore Global network. Every roll-up collapses multiple register entries into one, and the buyers shop where the biggest fee bases are.
The second is the office cost squeeze. Analysts at Jefferies found London office usage contracted by around 20% after the pandemic, with empty workspace hitting a 30-year high and vacancy reaching 10% in the City. The IFA notes that rising high street rents and cloud software have pushed a growing number of practices to shrink their premises or go fully remote, and a remote firm doesn't need a London registration.
The third is the wider drift of business out of the capital. Vacancysoft data reported by City AM shows London's share of head office job adverts fell from nearly 50% before the pandemic to 41%, with the North and Midlands taking the difference. ONS figures show 4 in 10 Londoners work from home against a national average of 2 in 10. When the partners can live in Cheshire and the software lives in the cloud, the registered office follows.
Whatever the mix, the result is the same. In 2019 there were 46 businesses for every accountancy firm in London. By 2025 it was 56. That's a 22% jump in potential clients per firm, in the most competitive accountancy market in the country.
The opportunity hiding in the headline
A shrinking market sounds like bad news. For London firms that are still trading, it's the opposite.
Every firm that closed or got swallowed left clients behind. Every merger creates disruption, and disrupted clients shop around. The competition for "accountant in London" searches is literally 16% thinner than it was six years ago.
The firms that will benefit are the ones that are visible when those orphaned clients start looking. That means a strong website, serious local search presence and content that proves expertise. If your firm has coasted on referrals while competitors disappeared around you, this is the moment to stop coasting.
Dig into the data
The full study covers all 12 UK regions, with interactive charts and complete methodology: explore the UK accountancy firm data study.
And if you're a London firm that wants to capture its share of a thinning market, get in touch. Rapport Digital works exclusively with accountants and this is exactly the kind of shift we help firms take advantage of.