FOI reference: FOI-2025-3192
You asked
Can you please tell us:
a. How many businesses have closed in Norfolk in 2025, (and as far back as you can go)
How many of these businesses were pubs or hospitality?
How many of these businesses were farms or agricultural?
b. How many businesses have created in Norfolk in 2025, (and as far back as you can go)
How many of these businesses were pubs or hospitality?
How many of these businesses were farms or agricultural?
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.
The Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) contains all businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE. We create several publications using that data and they may be of interest to you.
Since you are interested in business births and deaths in 2025 in Norfolk it is best to use the quarterly business demography results. We provide business births and deaths for Norfolk from the first quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2025. The figures in this release are regarded as 'official statistics in development.' Unfortunately, a breakdown of these figures by the specific industry you have requested is not held.
Businesses births and deaths in Norfolk are also available from our annual Business Demography release up until 2023. It contains data broken down by geography or industry. Unfortunately, a breakdown of these figures by the specific industry you have requested is also not held. Annual business demography figures for 2024 will become available on 20 November.
We have another publication called UK: Business, Activity, Size and Location and this is an annual snapshot of the IDBR taken in March. The latest data available are for 2025. In the publication we break down the number of UK businesses by geography, employment size-band, industry and legal status. This does not provide business births or deaths, however it will provide you with a snapshot to compare over years.
The easiest way to access the data is via the NOMIS data explorer tool, you will need to choose the UK Business Counts option. Data are held here back to 2010.
Using NOMIS you can access the data at enterprise level and local unit level (individual site level). Local unit level may be helpful if you are looking at the number of pubs. If you look at the enterprise counts this will, in the case of pubs, give you the pub chain as a whole rather than the number of individual sites. Both the annual and quarterly demography publications are only available at enterprise level.
If you require further assistance or guidance, please contact our Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) data service team at IDBRDAS@ons.gov.uk.