Business Register and Employment Survey

The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is a new Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey, the aim of which is to maintain the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), support regional estimation and provide the basis for annual estimates of employment.

Background to BRES

BRES will replace and integrate two existing ONS business surveys in 2009:

Annual Business Inquiry part 1 (ABI/1)

Collects employees' data at the business level to produce annual employment estimates. These estimates are currently published on the Nomis® website.

Business Register Survey (BRS)

Collects structural information at the business level and employees' data at the site level to maintain the sampling frame for ONS business surveys (the IDBR).

What is BRES?

BRES will be a UK sample survey of about 80-100,000 businesses. Like the existing BRS, BRES will collect some information at the business level and some data at site level.

The business level data collected is expected to be: business structure, total employees and total number of sites. At the site level address, business activity, full and part-time employees and one month's turnover data will be collected. Turnover will not be collected for public sector organisations because of the way they are funded. Male and female employee splits will not be collected because some businesses find it difficult to provide this information and the quality of the data can be poor.

The BRES development involves a complete redesign of methodology, from sample design through to publication. We aim to improve:

  • industry stratification and estimation methods for detailed outputs (and to attach quality measures to each)

  • the quality of the IDBR (for example by providing more up-to-date information, returned or modelled)

  • data on public versus private sector employment

Benefits of BRES

By integrating the two existing surveys, we can remove duplication and reduce respondent burden.


The new survey will also improve the timeliness of the employment data on the IDBR through an increased sample size and improved design. This will improve the accuracy of all estimates produced from register-based surveys through increased accuracy of the auxiliary variable (for example, employment).

The annual employment estimates will be improved in several respects:

  • The regional and local estimates will be more accurate as they will be based directly on reported site data rather than on data produced by an apportionment model

  • The co-ordinated production of national and regional estimates will improve both their efficiency of production and their coherence. This will in turn, minimise the time needed to resolve problems of coherence and so further improve the timeliness of the estimates

  • Quality measures will be published alongside all standard outputs which will provide useful information for the users on the quality of the data

  • A change of reference date from December to September may be less affected by seasonal factors and preferred by many customers 

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