Births and deaths of small businesses

You asked

I am looking for the number of small businesses in each city and town of the UK each year for the past ten years.

I am also looking for the number of business births and deaths for each city and town in the UK each year for the past ten years.

We said

Thank you for your request. We produce a publication called UK Business: Activity, size and location and this is a count of all businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE. The data in the publication are a snapshot of this business population taken in March of each year. The data are broken down by geography, industrial classification, legal status, employment and turnover size bands. The lowest level of geography in the publication is local authority level. Table 10 of the publication breaks the data down by local authority and employment size bands. We classify small businesses as those with less than 50 employment. You can calculate this by adding together the first four columns of Table 10. The following link will take you to the latest publication, containing data for 2019:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/ukbusinessactivitysizeandlocation/previousReleases

Data for previous years can be found by looking at the relevant year's publication. The table numbers have changed over time but if you have any trouble finding the data please contact our data service team on idbrdas@ons.gov.uk.

We also produce another annual publication called Business Demography. This publication also records the number of businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE. It differs to our other publication in that it records the number of businesses that were active throughout the year. It also shows the number of births, deaths and survival rates. These data are also broken down by geography to local authority level. The latest data available are for 2018. The 2019 data will be available at the end of November. Each publication shows data for at least the latest 5 years. Please see the link below:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/businessdemography/previousReleases

The data in both publications excludes the very small businesses that fall below the VAT and PAYE thresholds.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at idbrdas@ons.gov.uk.