UK company incorporations vs real business openings

What does Companies House count?

Companies House publishes official statistics on the UK companies register every quarter, now with a monthly breakdown. They describe corporate bodies registered under company law — above all companies formed under the Companies Act 2006; the tables published alongside also include limited liability partnerships. An incorporation is a new company added to the register. From April to June 2026 there were 192,287 company incorporations and 156,515 companies struck off, and the register grew by 0.7% to 5,516,377 companies at June 30, 2026.

By jurisdiction, the register held 5,147,747 companies in England and Wales, 278,477 companies in Scotland, and 90,153 companies in Northern Ireland at the end of the quarter. Companies House lists two recent changes that may affect how the figures are read: identity verification became a legal requirement for directors, people with significant control and those filing for companies on November 18, 2025, and fees for incorporation and registration documents went up on February 1, 2026.

The next release, covering July to September 2026, is due on October 29, 2026. We will update the figures in this article when it is out.

Who is missing from the incorporation figures?

The statistics count companies, not businesses. Companies House’s quality and methods guide says they do not include unincorporated businesses such as sole traders and ordinary partnerships, which are not required to register with Companies House, and that they are not a count of all businesses in the UK (Companies House · quality and methods guide). A self-employed barber, a builder trading under their own name or a café run by two partners in an ordinary partnership can be a new business on the high street and still be absent from the incorporation count.

It works the other way too. Companies House notes that companies are registered whether or not they go on to actively trade. A holding company, a company set up to own a property or a consultancy run from a spare room each counts as an incorporation, and none of them needs premises that customers visit.

Why the two numbers differ

• Address. The register holds a company’s registered office — the address for official post, which can be an accountant’s office, a formation agent or a director’s home. The trading address is where customers go. For a small company the two can be in different towns.
• Timing. A company is usually incorporated before anything opens, sometimes months before the fit-out, licences and first hires are done. Companies House counts by month and quarter, and its latest quarter ended on June 30, 2026; our window is September 27 – October 27, 2026.
• One company, many places. A chain is one company and many premises. Its new branch is a new record for us and usually no new incorporation.
• Sole traders and ordinary partnerships. They can open premises without ever appearing on the companies register.
• Companies that never trade. Some incorporations lead to no activity at all. Companies House does not publish how many, and our records cannot tell, so we do not estimate it.

That is why we neither subtract one figure from the other nor divide them. The difference between registering and opening, for any country: newly registered vs newly opened; the U.S. equivalent, where the Census Bureau counts applications for a tax ID: Census business applications vs. businesses that open.

How many new business records do we see in the UK?

Between September 27 and October 27, 2026, 59,187 UK records entered our newly opened businesses section. 74.9% of them carry a phone number and 52.4% carry website information, which leaves 28,150 without it. In four major cities:

London had 4,973 new records, several times as many as any of the other three. That is the town of London on the address; places such as Croydon, Ilford and Harrow are counted under their own names, and the Greater London page covers them all. Manchester received more new records than Birmingham (588 against 550) although Birmingham has more records in our database. Relative to its size in our database, Manchester had the most new records of the four (15.0 per 1,000) and Glasgow the fewest (7.7). City by city, with sectors: new businesses in UK cities.

Across the UK, construction companies (2,318) and hair and beauty salons (2,218) had the most new records among the 14 sectors we track, followed by auto repair shops (1,399). Any of them can be run by a sole trader — and then it appears among our new records but not among incorporations. Every sector has its own page in the UK data.

What it means if you sell to new UK businesses

• Pick the list that matches your customer. If you sell to the company itself, the incorporation is the earliest signal. If you sell to the premises, the opening is when the decisions are made: card terminal, insurance, suppliers, cleaning, a website.
• Narrow before you start. 59,187 records in 30 days is too many for one list; one sector in one county or town is not. Restaurants in London, for example, had 159 new records in the window — about 5 a day.
• Phone, then website. With 74.9% of new UK records carrying a phone number, a call team has a number for most of them, though a listed number is no promise that someone answers. The 28,150 records without website information are where web designers start; an empty field does not prove there is no site, but it is a good first question.
• How to pull it. Location: United Kingdom, then a county such as Greater Manchester and a town; section: newly opened businesses; then a sector or category and Phone — has. Searching and counting are free on every plan; a credit is spent only when you first open a record, and an export counts as an open (pricing). Save the search and new matches arrive by email every day.