You asked
Do the Office for National Statistics hold a record of the number of businesses operating across the agricultural, forestry and fishing industries in each of the last twenty years? If yes, please provide this information digitally.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry regarding the number of businesses operating across the agricultural, forestry and fishing industries in each of the last twenty years. Business counts can be found in our annual publication 'UK Business: Activity, size and location'. From 2014 onwards the data are published in datasets that users can filter in order to find the required data. Prior to this the data was produced as a series of Excel spreadsheets. I have added a small table with the data for 2014 to 2016 and this data is the number of businesses in agriculture, forestry & fishing registered for VAT and/or PAYE. (Please note these figures do not include very small businesses below the VAT and PAYE thresholds.)
The number of VAT and/or PAYE based enterprises in the UK for agriculture, forestry and fishing 2014 to 2016:
| 2014 | 145,280 |
| 2015 | 146,905 |
| 2016 | 147,600 |
For data prior to this you need to look at the 2013 publication. Tables B7.2, B7.3 and B7.4 contain the data you require back to 1995:
The publication is designed to be an annual snapshot of the UK business population and it is important that if you want to compare the data over time that you refer to the changes in methodology in the publication criteria as you will not be comparing like with like. From table B7.3 onwards the data includes businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE but table B7.2 includes VAT based enterprises only. There have also been changes in Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) over the years. The tables contain footnotes highlighting these changes and I have also included a link to the methodology paper that explains the changes over time in a little more detail:
If you have any further queries regarding this please contact idbrdas@ons.gov.uk.