Co-working spaces and the people who meet in them

Hampshire's economy is made of small firms. In March 2026 the Office for National Statistics counted 59,420 VAT or PAYE registered businesses in the Hampshire County Council area, which leaves out Southampton and Portsmouth. Of those, 52,295, or 88%, employed fewer than ten people. Southampton added another 7,285 businesses and Portsmouth 6,095, and the share of micro firms was much the same in both cities.

Many of those businesses are one person. Nationally, the ONS found that 43.0% of the UK's 2.2 million companies were single-employee limited companies in March 2026. The Department for Business and Trade's wider count, which includes sole traders who are not registered for VAT or PAYE, put the UK's private sector at 5.6 million businesses at the start of 2026, of which 4.1 million (74%) employed nobody but the owners.

Put those numbers together and you get a lot of people working on their own. That is the gap shared workspaces fill, and it is why they have become one of the places Hampshire's events happen.

Who works where now

The way employed people work has changed too. Between January and March 2025, the ONS found that 28% of working adults in Great Britain were hybrid working, splitting their time between home and a workplace. The share has risen since March 2022, while the share who only travel to work has fallen. Employees (30%) were more likely to hybrid work than the self-employed (24%), and the ONS notes that working from home only was more common among the self-employed.

Those are figures for Great Britain, not Hampshire alone, but they describe a pattern most people will recognise: fewer days in a shared office, and fewer chance conversations by the kettle.

What the research says about shared space

The best-known academic study of how co-working spaces work as communities was published in Organization Studies in 2017. Lyndon Garrett, Gretchen Spreitzer and Peter Bacevice spent time inside one space and wrote that, as more people work remotely, "many feel increasingly isolated". They found that the sense of community in a co-working space does not come with the desk. Members build it between them, through three kinds of shared action the authors call endorsing, encountering and engaging: backing the space's way of doing things, bumping into each other, and taking part in what goes on.

It was one space, studied closely, so it is not proof of anything about Hampshire. It does match what the listings show here: the spaces that host events are the ones putting on a reason to turn up, not only renting a desk.

Where Hampshire's shared workspaces come into the listings

Several kinds of workspace host or run business events on hampshire.events. They fall into roughly three groups.

• Business and innovation centres. Basepoint Andover, BASE Bordon Innovation Centre, Fareham Innovation Centre, Solent Business Centre in Southampton, Ocean Village Innovation Centre and Incuhive Basingstoke. These rent offices and desks to small firms, and several run their own networking mornings and workshops.
• Co-working spaces. Clockwise Southampton, Spark Community Space in Portsmouth, The Host Space at St Luke's in Southsea and the Save a Warrior co-working space in Fareham Shopping Centre. These host groups run by outside organisers as well as their own members' socials.
• Labs and science park buildings. Barclays Eagle Lab Southampton and the buildings at the University of Southampton Science Park, including the Future Towns Innovation Hub and the Axis Conference Centre. These tend to host specialist meet-ups and talks.

The organisers who use these rooms are a mix. Natural Business Network runs a lunchtime session in Andover where people work alongside each other and then talk. Omni Business Development Network holds a weekly early meeting in Fareham. Portsmouth Business Exchange runs informal morning networking without referral targets. The HUUDDLE puts on evening socials in Southampton, Enterprise South runs a lunchtime session for small business owners, and Things Connected brings together people working with connected devices and sensors. The current dates are in the listings at the end of this article.

Why it works for one-person businesses

The government's small business survey gives a hint of why. In 2025, 22% of businesses with no employees said they had sought external information or advice in the previous year, against 28% of small and medium employers. When the survey asked where that advice came from, accountants were named by 34% and business networks and trade associations by 21%. For someone without colleagues, the people at the next desk or the monthly meet-up are often the nearest thing to a team to ask.

A co-working event also has practical advantages over a hotel breakfast:

• The room is already set up for work. There is wifi, a screen, and somewhere to sit afterwards with a laptop.
• You can stay. Several of the sessions in the listings are built around that, with networking first and working time after.
• Members are often the hosts. Conversations carry on between events because people see each other on ordinary working days.

What this means if you're going to events

If you work alone, a session at a shared workspace is one of the gentler ways into networking. A few things worth knowing:

• Check whether you need to be a member. Most events in the listings are open to visitors, but some workspace socials are mainly for members. The listing and the organiser's page say which.
• Bring something to do. If the event runs into co-working time, use it. Working in the same room is how the encounters the 2017 study describes actually happen.
• Try more than one space. A science park lab and a high street co-working unit feel very different, and the people are different too.
• Look at the workshops as well as the socials. Some of the business centres run training sessions under council business support programmes, and the eligibility rules are on the listing.

Our guide to your first business event covers what to expect on the day, and choosing a networking group helps if you want something regular.

Find a room near you

Browse the venues directory to see every place that has hosted a listed event, or start from your town: Southampton, Portsmouth, Fareham, Basingstoke, Andover or Bordon. For lunchtime sessions, try the lunches page, and for anything this week, this week.