Home baking fastest growing business in Manchester as many turn skills into companies during lockdown

• Report by ITV Granada Reports correspondent Tim Scott

Home baking has become one of the fastest growing small business ventures in Manchester - with a rise of more than 129% in a year.

The increase in professional home bakers comes as more turn their passion for baking into a business to combat lockdown unemployment.

Before lockdown Stephanie Marshall from Stockport worked for a commercial bakery.

But with so much time on her hands, she decided to put her skills to use from home making recipe boxes for people to magic up their own cakes and brownies setting up her own company, The Treehouse Bakery.

She said: "I want to make it easy for everyone, I want everyone to have the tools at their finger tips to be able to bake something delicious whenever they feel like it and that was the idea to put together a recipe kit for bakers."

Stephanie's venture is now part of a growing trend - with home-bakers turning their hands to starting their own working-from-home business.

Luckily, Stephanie says she has had help from other small businesses in the Heaton Mersey community.

Despite the recession, home baking is now the fastest rising sector of all small businesses. Alan Thomas, from Simply Business, says he believes small businesses will only continue growing.

He said: "With many of us working more from home, even after we get through the backend of this current period of the pandemic, I really believe that that does drive demand for home services, for garden services, people are going to want to do more and that does create opportunity for small businesses to get stuck in.

It is hoped many working from home ventures will grow even more once lockdown ends.