ENTREPRENEURSHIP INDICATORS PROGRAMME (EIP) - TIMELY INDICATORS

 

United Kingdom

Links, websites

• Monthly data on registered and effective number of enterprises, entries and exits (companies house)
• Business demography at the ONS
• Business Start-ups and Clossures: VAT registration and De-registration (Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform- BERR / The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS))

Organisations

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) was created on 28 June 2007 together with the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills to replace the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). DTI was producing an annual report on UK companies.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) was created in June 2009 from the merger of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
The BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) VAT registrations and de-registrations series has now been superseded by the ONS publication ‘Business Demography’.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) haS released a new National Statistics series on business births, deaths and survival rates, on 28th November 2008. It is now the only official source of information on business start-ups and closures.
Companies House

All limited companies in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are registered at Companies House, an Executive Agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). There are more than 2 million limited companies registered in Great Britain, and more than 300,000 new companies are incorporated each year.

The main functions of Companies House are to:

• incorporate and dissolve limited companies;
• examine and store company information delivered under the Companies Act and related legislation; and
• Make this information available to the public.

Other organisations like Dun and Bradstreet, Barclays (small business survey) and BankSearch are producing data on UK companies.

Sources

The ONS is using the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) to produce business demography data.

The Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) is a list of UK businesses maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and combines the former Central Statistical Office (CSO) VAT based business register and the former Employment Department (ED) employment statistics system. It complies with European Union Regulation (EC) No 177/2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes.

The IDBR is updated from the following sources:

• Value Added Tax (VAT)
  Detail of businesses registered for VAT.
  Covers over 1.7 million traders in 2009.
  Provided by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) daily.
  
  
• Pay As You Earn (PAYE)
  Details of employers with employees in PAYE schemes.
  Covers over 1.4 million employers in 2009.
  Provided by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) quarterly.
  
  
• National Statistics Surveys based on the IDBR
  During 2007/08 ONS conducted 68 surveys of business and local authorities on its own behalf, issuing 1,449,789 survey questionnaires to some 267,000 businesses.
  
  
• Company Registrations
  Covers over two million incorporated businesses registered in Great Britain and over 29,100 incorporated businesses registered in Northern Ireland. Data provided by Companies House.
  Of those incorporated businesses Dun and Bradstreet provides an annual extract of over 320,000 records detailing the group structures of approximately 70,000 global groups.
  

Units (Business definitions)

• Administrative units
  VAT trader and PAYE employer information forms the basis of the IDBR supplemented by information from Companies House on incorporated businesses.
  
  
• Statistical units
  A group of legal units under common ownership is called an enterprise group.
  An enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units (generally based on VAT or PAYE) which has a certain degree of autonomy within an enterprise group.
  An individual site (for example factory or shop) in an enterprise is called a local unit.
  
  
• Observation unit
  Reporting units hold the mailing address to which the survey forms are sent. The form can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.

Scope / coverage

The IDBR data cover all economic activities and all legal forms though coverage is limited for certain activities that are exempt from VAT, particularly on the education and health sectors.
While IDBR data refer to the United Kingdom, the Companies House report includes data on Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland).

Threshold

VAT registered and employing enterprises are included in the IDBR. All incorporated enterprises are included in the register of companies.

Time

IBDR reports are published annually. Data are reported for calendar years.
The annual reports of Companies House are made for the years ended 31 March.
Monthly and weekly data are published online every month by Companies House. (M-1)

Purity

The IBDR follows Eurostat definitions for births and deaths.
Companies House does not follow the international recommended definitions. Entries reflect the appearance of a new enterprise within the economy, whatever the demographic event, be that a merger, renaming, split-off... or birth.

Bankruptcy

• Bankruptcy (the insolvency service)

 

ENTREPRENEURSHIP INDICATORS PROGRAMME (EIP) - TIMELY INDICATORS