Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy: May 2026

• In March 2026, more than one in seven (15%) trading UK single-site businesses reported that their turnover was higher compared with the previous calendar month, down 3 percentage points from March 2025; the South East had the highest proportion of any nation or region (19%) while the West Midlands reported the lowest proportion (13%).

• Approximately a quarter (24%) of trading UK single-site businesses reported that their turnover had decreased in March 2026 compared with the previous calendar month, broadly stable with March 2025; the South West had the highest proportion of any nation or region (25%) while the East Midlands had the lowest (19%).

• The proportion of single-site businesses that reported that the prices of goods and services bought had increased, compared with the previous month, rose for all UK nations and regions between March 2025 and March 2026; the South West had the largest rise during this period (31% to 42%) and London had the smallest rise (27% to 32%).

• Between March 2025 and March 2026, all nations saw an increase in the proportion of single-site businesses that reported that the prices of goods and services sold had increased compared with the previous month; Northern Ireland had the largest rise during this period (12% to 18%) while Scotland had the smallest (12% to 13%).

• 9% of UK single-site businesses experienced worker shortages in early April 2026, broadly stable with both early March 2026 and early April 2025; the West Midlands had the highest proportion of any nation or region (10%) while the East Midlands had the lowest (6%).

The data presented in this article are weighted single-site estimates from Wave 130 to Wave 154 of the Office for National Statistics’ Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which covers the periods March 2025 to March 2026. For some questions, businesses were asked for their experiences for the survey live period. However, other questions ask specifically about the most recent calendar month in relation to the time of completion.

This BICS subnational release focuses on the following topics:

• turnover
• prices of goods and services bought and sold
• worker shortages

The BICS subnational release focuses on a single-business-site approach to be reflective of sites spread across various geographies. Single-site businesses represent approximately 98% of all businesses and approximately half of total UK turnover and employment. BICS does not cover all sectors of the economy and only includes private sector businesses.

The data reported are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. This means that the characteristics of single-site businesses that responded within a certain region and wave can have an impact on subnational BICS estimates. Further information on quality is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey quality and methodology information report and we regularly update confidence intervals associated with the survey questions.

Private sector businesses

The Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) is a survey of private sector businesses, meaning that the public sector is not sampled. Some businesses are also excluded; please see the Coverage section in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey quality and methodology information report.

Reporting unit

The reporting unit is the business unit to which questionnaires are sent. The response from the reporting unit can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.

Trading businesses  

Trading businesses refers to businesses that responded that their trading status was “currently fully trading” or “currently partially trading” only.

If trading businesses is not specifically specified, the statistics presented refer to businesses that have “Not permanently stopped trading”. This includes trading businesses and those that said their trading status was “paused trading and intends to restart in the next two weeks” or “paused trading and does not intend to restart within the next two weeks”.

This article uses microdata from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) to help understand business impacts on the subnational UK economy. It predominately focuses on Wave 130 to Wave 154 of the BICS (7 April 2025 to 19 April 2026) covering the period since the last edition of this article.

The Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) is voluntary, and the results are classed as official statistics in development.

Subnational BICS estimates

Subnational BICS estimates have been created by using the results collected in the fortnightly survey. Each survey return from each reporting unit is then applied to the reporting unit’s one local site. We have removed businesses with multiple sites from the sample, and results in this analysis are based on single-site businesses only (as identified on the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR)). Sections 2 and 3 of our Business insights and impact on the UK and subnational economy: 9 December 2022 article outline in detail the methodology behind our single-site subnational estimates, and its impact compared with previously published results encompassing all businesses.

Aggregates of International Territorial Level (ITL1) regions such as the UK or England may have higher or lower response proportions than any of their constituent regions because of differences in the sample composition in terms of company workforce.

Because the larger aggregate regions (such as the UK or England) generally have a larger proportion of smaller companies, if there is a substantial difference between the response proportions of larger and smaller companies, this will be reflected in the headline figures.

Weighting

Single-site estimates in this release are weighted, ensuring estimates are representative of all single-site businesses. The characteristics of single-site businesses that responded within a certain region and wave can have an impact on subnational BICS estimates. A detailed description of the weighting methodology and its differences to unweighted estimates is available in our Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (BICS): preliminary weighted results.

The weighted estimates for Scotland for businesses with 10 or more employees are available from the Scottish Government website.

Single-site sample

While the single-site approach is not representative of all UK businesses (as it excludes businesses with multiple sites), weighted single-site estimates are representative of all UK single-site businesses and approximately 98% of all businesses (and half of total UK turnover and employment). The accompanying datasets show how the composition by region and industry (when using the single-sites approach) holds up, when compared with the all businesses sample.

Measuring the data

The BICS survey is voluntary and may only reflect the characteristics of those that responded. More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey quality and methodology information report.