New UK Business Counts Datasets

We are pleased to announce the release of a new product, the UK Business Counts datasets, on Nomis. These enable access to the datasets used to create the ONS UK Business: Activity, Size and Location release.

The new product consists of two separate datasets: one containing counts based on the number of enterprises in an area and the other a count based on the number of local units.

An enterprise can be thought of as the overall business, made up of all the individual sites or workplaces. It is defined as the smallest combination of legal units (generally based on VAT and/or PAYE records) that has a certain degree of autonomy within an enterprise group.

A local unit is an individual site (for example a factory or shop) associated with an enterprise. It can also be referred to as workplace.

The new product gives counts of the number of enterprises or local units within a geographic area, down to middle layer super output areas, broken down by employment size band, detailed industry (5 digit SIC2007) and legal status.

The initial release includes the dataset for 2011. This does not correspond to the dataset that is used for the most recent UK Business: Activity, Size and Location release, which is a 2012 dataset. Following the release of the 2011 dataset we intend to add additional periods, including the 2012 dataset, in the near future.

Accessing Data

Use the wizard or advanced query options to access the datasets: