Activity, size and location

UK businesses broken down by location, industry, legal status and employment, and UK enterprise levels measured by turnover.

Highlights

The number of UK business births has remained broadly similar between 2017 and 2018, moving from 382,000 to 381,000, a birth rate of 12.9% in 2018 compared with 13.1% in 2017.
The number of UK business deaths decreased from 362,000 to 336,000 between 2017 and 2018, a death rate of 11.4% compared with 12.4% in 2017.
London had the highest business birth rate at 15.9%, whereas the North West had the highest death rate at 13.5%.

The number of Value Added Tax (VAT) and/or Pay As You Earn (PAYE) businesses in the UK, as of March 2019, increased to 2.72 million, an increase of 1.8% from March 2018 and a slight recovery from the minimal increase seen between 2017 and 2018.
The number of companies and public corporations has continued to rise and represents 72.5% of total UK businesses, which has offset a gradual fall in sole proprietors and partnerships.
The largest industry group is professional, scientific and technical, making up 17.4% of all registered businesses in the UK.

UK business: activity, size and location

The data contained in these tables are numbers of enterprises and local units produced from a snapshot of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) taken on 15 March 2019. The publication contains tables on local units and enterprises by geography, industry, legal status and employment size band. Additional tables at enterprise level provide information by turnover size band.
Business demography, UK

Annual data on births, deaths and survivals of businesses in the UK, by geographical area and Standard Industrial Classification 2007: SIC 2007 groups.

Business demography, UK: 2018

Change in the number of UK businesses broken down by sector of the economy.
UK business; activity, size and location: 2019

UK businesses broken down by legal status, industry, region, employment and turnover size bands.