UK web dev freelancer here. I think it very much depends on the kind of organisations you want to work for. I went solo in 2016 as a self-employed person and never had any trouble accessing clients, who in my case are typically a mix of small digital agencies and small non-technical businesses with no in-house technical resource. I incorporated a company last year in order to firewall my work from my personal affairs, and you may find some companies that will only work with limited companies, but I haven't had that problem so far. If you want to work for big corporations I expect you will run into such issues or the problem you describe yourself. However it's definitely worth approaching different shapes/sizes of business. As another commenter mentioned, you should definitely be aware of the ramifications of the IR35 regulation as this will probably shape the sort of work available to you. Some people work with "umbrella companies" in order to be able to fit better within the constraints of IR35.
All told I've never looked back after ~7 years of doing this, and while job security can obviously be an issue, the comparative flexibility and freedom over your work/life balance etc more than makes up for it. Good luck!
Some people work with "umbrella companies" in order to be able to fit better within the constraints of IR35.
The point of umbrella companies is for clients to make sure the work falls outside the scope of IR35 while dumping the corresponding massive tax hit and extra paperwork on the contractor/freelancer instead of paying what they're explicitly supposed to be paying themselves. It's basically industrial scale tax avoidance by large clients but since HMRC still gets its tax anyway the government doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to fix it.
Of course this is the same government - or at least a lot of the same politicians forming a government - that seems to be in denial about the results of the recent IR35 changes while simultaneously complaining about how we have no growth in our economy and we need to support industries like science and technology more. Really? Go figure.
For me, it’s been almost completely personal relationships. Either people I know from school, previous work, or made acquaintance after presenting at a meetup. All of these environments allowed me to demonstrate that I can get shit done.
Part of the freelancer’s job is to maintain those relationships, and often these are people that I want to go get a drink with anyway, so it’s not just opportunistic.
All told I've never looked back after ~7 years of doing this, and while job security can obviously be an issue, the comparative flexibility and freedom over your work/life balance etc more than makes up for it. Good luck!