You asked
I am trying to locate information on the number of employees in the UK for the really large companies i.e. FTSE 350 and above. I have come across regular reports like this, but they all stop at 250 employees which is just too small.
Would it be possible to get the same table as Table A on P3 but with more granularity i.e. 250-1000, 1000-5000, 5000-10000, 10,000-50000, 50000-100,000, 100000 and above? I appreciate the individual data is restricted, but grouping like this is just aggregated data. If these bands are too narrow I would be happy to have fewer bands with companies in each. We are using the information to research Human Resources outsourcing opportunities.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information enquiry. The link that you attached in your request is from a publication produced by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and is called the Business Population Estimates (BPE). The publication shows the estimate of the total number of private sector businesses in the UK.
The ONS produce the UK Business: Activity, size and location publication (http://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/ukbusinessactivitysizeandlocation/previousReleases) and these data are a count of businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE. We provide the registered information to BIS and they then add on an estimate of the businesses that are not registered. In 2015 this amounted to approximately 3 million businesses and these were added into the zero employees size band.
We would be able to produce your request as part of our bespoke data service. This is a chargeable service and if you would like a quote please e-mail: idbrdas@ons.gov.uk with the details. The table would not include the unregistered population. If you go ahead with your request I would suggest that you roll together some of the higher sidebands. Our disclosure control procedures ensure that any employee figures in cells with a low business count are suppressed in order to avoid disclosure. As this information is already available to you via this route ONS considers that S21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.