Links to websites outside the Scottish Government
Please note that when accessing the following links you will leave the Scottish Government website. The Scottish Government and its staff are not responsible for content external to this website.
Produced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the "Business Population Estimates" publication is the main UK equivalent of Scottish Corporate Sector Statistics and provides business information for each Government Office Region in the UK broken down by company size and industry. It includes information about registered and unregistered enterprises.
The publication "UK Business: Activity, Size and Location" is produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and contains detailed information on all registered businesses in the UK including size, classification and location.
Statistics on Enterprise Births, Deaths and Survival are released annually by the ONS. They are the best official source on business start-ups, closures and survival rates and provide detailed information by local authority, region and industrial sector at a UK level.
The information note UK Business Data Sources provides more detail about the three publications above and, in particular, explains the key differences between them and Scottish Corporate Sector Statistics.
For more information on the "Inter Departmental Business Register" (IDBR) please see the link above.
The preferred source of public sector employment data is the National Statistics Public Sector Employment (PSE) series. This is published quarterly by ONS and the Scottish Government and provides employment estimates at national and regional (government office) level based on public sector returns. Where data is required for GB below regional level, the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) employee jobs estimates provide one possible source of information. This data provides estimates of the level of public and private sector employee jobs by Local Authority from 2008 to 2010.
There are some limitations and caveats that should be understood before this data is used. In particular, unlike the PSE series figures these estimates are measures of jobs not people. They cover employee jobs rather than the wider measure of workforce jobs i.e. they exclude self-employed jobs, HM Forces and Government Supported Trainees. The estimates also exclude employee jobs in farm agriculture.
Individual companies cannot be identified in analysis of the IDBR data for disclosure reasons. Some analysts find the "Scottish Business Insider" a useful source of information as it provides data such as employment and turnover on the top 500 companies in Scotland.
Some analysts find the "Scottish Business Information Service (SCOTBIS)" a useful source of information. SCOTBIS is based on the vast resources of the National Library of Scotland (NLS). At NLS you can access market research reports, business databases, international directories, and business and trade journals.