Title

Detailed size analysis of business, Wales and UK

Last update

21 December 2023 21 December 2023

Next update

November 2024

Publishing organisation

Welsh Government

Source 1

Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), Office for National Statistics

Contact email

economic.stats@gov.wales

Designation

National Statistics

Lowest level of geographical disaggregation

Local authorities

Geographical coverage

United Kingdom

Languages covered

English only

Data licensing

You may use and re-use this data free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government License - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence

Statistical quality

The IDBR covers a very high proportion of the employment and turnover in the UK, but because it excludes most of the very large number of smallest businesses that operate below the VAT threshold, its coverage in terms of the number of enterprises is only partial (around 50%). In order to correct for this, the figures presented here include estimates for unregistered enterprises, together with their related employment and turnover. These estimates for unregistered enterprises are calculated using a combination of: IDBR data; information on persons who are self-employed in their main or second job, taken from the Labour Force Survey carried out by the ONS; and information on the numbers of sole traders and partnerships from the Survey of Personal Incomes data provided by the Inland Revenue.
A fuller description of the methodology used can be found in the document in the main Business Structure folder in this area of StatsWales.
Estimates for turnover exclude figures for the financial and business services sector throughout this dataset. This is because the turnover information that is recorded on the IDBR for enterprises in the financial services sector also includes the amounts involved in the transactions carried out by these enterprises and is therefore not comparable to turnover information in the other sectors.
In order to avoid suppression of data due to disclosure control (which must occur for any aggregates based on less than 20 enterprises), some of the size bands have been presented in an aggregated form. These aggregated size bands have been chosen to limit the amount of aggregation whilst ensuring no data are suppressed.

Keywords

Welsh Business Structure

General description

This dataset provides data on the structure of enterprises active in Wales, including estimates for the very smallest businesses that operate below the VAT threshold. The variables analysed are counts of the enterprises active in each area, together with related employment and turnover aggregates in each of the given size bands, based on the number of UK employees in the enterprise as a whole.

Data collection and calculation

The data given are based on enterprises with some activity in Wales, regardless of the region of registration. In this context, an enterprise is taken to be an entire organisation, including its head office and all the individual UK sites, wherever they may be located. The region of the enterprise is usually based on the location of its head office, although the sites may be located in other regions. The figures given for employment and turnover for Wales in this analysis relate only to the sites of the enterprises located in Wales.
In all cases, the size band of the enterprise is based on the number of UK employees (whether full-time or part-time) in the enterprise. This ensures that an enterprise employing 10,000 UK staff but only a handful in Wales is categorised as a large, and not a micro, enterprise.
The enterprises covered are all private sector enterprises (that is companies, sole-proprietorships, partnerships, private non-profit making bodies and mutual associations), plus public corporations and nationalised bodies. Local and central government organisations are excluded.
The data have been derived from a number of sources. The primary source is a detailed extract taken in March of each year from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This gives details of all enterprises active in Wales, including the UK employment and turnover and derived figures for the Welsh elements of employment and turnover (using information about the sites in each enterprise which are located in Wales). It also includes identifiers for industry (using Standard Industrial Classification), geographical location and legal status of each enterprise, thus allowing the analysis given here.

Frequency of publication

Annual

Data reference periods

2003 to 2023

Rounding applied

As all enterprise counts and employment aggregates in this dataset have been independently rounded to the nearest 5 and 100 respectively, and all turnover aggregates independently rounded to the nearest million pounds, the figures may not add up exactly.
In order to avoid suppression of data due to disclosure control (which must occur for any aggregates based on less than 20 enterprises), some of the size bands have been presented in an aggregated form. These aggregated size bands have been chosen to limit the amount of aggregation whilst ensuring no data are suppressed.

Name

Econ0045