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Business openings and closures in your area

There were 2,859,535 active businesses in the UK in 2024, when 317,440 opened and 280,370 closed, a net gain of 37,070 (ONS annual series). For 2025 the ONS quarterly series, a separate count that does not reconcile with the annual one, has 305,940 openings and 289,375 closures, a net gain of 16,565.

Council area figures come once a year: the latest are for 2024, and ONS publishes the 2025 figures on 19 November 2026. Closures for 2023 and 2024 are provisional, and all counts are rounded to multiples of 5 (ONS controlled rounding).

Business openings and closures in the UK, 2017 to 2026

All industries: 305,940 businesses opened in the UK in 2025 and 289,375 closed, a net gain of 16,565. Closures outnumbered openings in 2022 and 2023. 2026 appears in the quarterly view only, as ONS has published three quarters of it.

Industry
Period
Opened Closed Net gain Net loss

Business survival rates in the UK

Of the 363,825 UK businesses that opened in 2019, 94.6% were still active a year later, 74.7% after two years, 55.9% after three, 45.0% after four and 38.4% after five years, in 2024 (ONS annual series, Table 5.1a).

Business openings and closures by area, 2019 to 2024

One hexagon for each of the 361 UK council areas.

Measure

How many businesses are there in your area

Openings, closures and active businesses for every UK council area, county, region and country, 2019 to 2024, from the ONS annual series.

Opened and closed by year

Opened Closed Net change above each year

Net change per 100 active businesses, 2024

Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS), Business demography, UK (annual series: council areas, counties, regions and survival) and Business demography, quarterly, UK (quarterly series: the UK by industry, and regions).

Edition: annual series, Business demography, UK: 2024, published 20 November 2025 (Tables 1.1a to 3.1d, all industries, and Table 5.1a); quarterly series, Business demography, quarterly, UK: July to September 2026, published 29 October 2026.

Next release: Business demography, UK: 2025, confirmed for 19 November 2026 at 9:30am.

Data limits: Council area counts are annual and run to 2024; the quarterly series runs to September 2026 but covers only the UK, its industries and the 12 regions and countries. Counts are of businesses (enterprises) with turnover or employment at any time in the year. Closures for 2023 and 2024 include an ONS adjustment for reactivations, businesses that trade again after being counted as closed, and are provisional. In the quarterly series, for October 2025 to September 2026, ONS reduced closures by 10.3% for the same reason and openings by 3.8% for false openings that later register checks remove. ONS revises recent quarters in each edition. ONS rounds every count to a multiple of 5 (controlled rounding) and rounds each table on its own, so totals differ slightly between tables: the UK net change for 2025 is +16,565 in the quarterly industry table and +16,555 in its regional table. The annual and quarterly series are separate counts and do not reconcile: the annual series has 317,440 UK openings in 2024, the quarterly series 310,610. ONS flags 30 council areas, marked with a dot on the map, where more than 500 businesses were registered at a single postcode in at least one year; ONS notes that such registrations can distort the counts. Seven councils created after 2019 (Buckinghamshire, North Northamptonshire, West Northamptonshire, Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness, North Yorkshire and Somerset) have no ONS rows of their own for some of the years on this page; for those years this page uses the ONS county total for the same area or the sum of the former districts, which carries up to four rounding differences. Retail is SIC 47 and hospitality is accommodation and food services (SIC section I). Data on this page run to September 2026 for the UK and regions and to 2024 for council areas.

Hex layout: Open Innovations, CC BY 4.0. Built by Totally.Digital.