Almost nine in 10 of those polled were against Britain leaving the EU, with a further one in 10 undecided

London’s technology sector overwhelmingly opposes Britain exiting the EU, according to a survey of members of Tech London Advocates, an industry group representing almost 3,000 senior members of the capital’s tech scene.

Of the members polled, 87% opposed Brexit, due to fears that leaving the EU would make it harder for British companies to reach customers in EU countries; harder to find and employ the necessary talent from overseas; and harder to convince international companies to operate in the UK at scale.

Just 3% of those polled supported the UK leaving the EU, with the remaining 10% declining to take a stance on the issue.

Russ Shaw, the founder of Tech London Advocates, said: “London has established a global reputation as the digital capital of Europe. There is significant concern within the digital community that Brexit would undermine this position and threaten relationships with the European market.

“Attracting international companies to the capital has been one of the great success stories of London’s digital economy. Brexit could see global businesses locating in emerging digital hubs in Berlin, Paris and Stockholm rather than London.”

Four-fifths (81%) of those polled by TLA believed that Brexit would make it harder to employ people from EU countries. The issue is heavily linked to Britain’s wider immigration policy, an area where the technology industry has long been unhappy.

In November, at an exclusive dinner arranged by London-based fintech startup Transferwise, senior executives from a number of British “unicorns” grilled representatives from Number 10 about Brexit and immigration.

Transferwise’s co-founder, Taavet Hinrikus, said that even with EU membership, “the biggest constriction to growth is hiring people”, and warned that if the Leave camp won, “it would make sense for us to relocate to Europe”.

In February 2015, four technology jobs were added to the shortage occupation list for the first time, acknowledging a paucity of native talent and allowing firms to more easily hire overseas. Product managers, senior developers, data scientists and cybersecurity specialists can be more easily hired from outside the EU – but only if employers demonstrate that they initially looked domestically. The Migration Advisory Council has recommended that this rule should also be relaxed.

Although the broad Leave campaign is often characterised by its opposition to immigration, those in technology who do favour Britain exiting the EU take a different tack. Jeff Peel, the managing director of Quadriga Consulting, is one of the 3% of TLA members who thinks Britain would be better off out.

“I wouldn’t ascribe to all the arguments that the leave camp has,” he says. “For instance, I think immigration is hugely important. We need to attract talent from all over the world to come to Britain.”

But, he argues, “it’s entirely up to the UK to decide the types of people that it needs. The fact is that with the open border policy that we have within the EU, the people who are attracted are attracted to relatively low-paid employment. We’re not actually attracting hordes of highly skilled Europeans with lots of money to spend.

“UK tech startups employ two or three people in Hoxton. The bulk of employment in Britain’s tech sector is often provided by companies that aren’t even located in the EU: look at Microsoft, for example, or Fujitsu.”

For the rest of Britain’s technology sector, the issue isn’t so much whether or not to support the UK’s continued membership of the EU, but how best to do so. Shaw cautions that the small firms who make up the majority of those in the sector often don’t have the time or resources to campaign effectively.Instead they are having to speak through industry bodies such as the TLA or Tech UK (whose own poll of members found that 71% would like to remain part of a reformed EU and a further 17% wanted to stay in the EU regardless of reform).

But Shaw hopes that the message sent by those bodies won’t be seen as part of what the Leave campaign has dubbed “project fear”. Despite talk of companies relocating in the event of a leave vote, he sees the UK as a whole as an increasingly “entrepreneurial nation”, which will listen to the struggles of those trying to make it on their own.

He added: “Something like half a million new businesses were started last year. I think anybody who engages in business, because of the internet being a global tool, knows that they need to access markets on a global bases. And so I think that rather than this being the elites versus the ordinary folk, I look at this more as being the past versus the future.”

• This article was amended on 4 March 2016 to update the results of the Tech UK poll.

