​FOI Ref: FOI/2022/4722

You asked

I'm gathering statistics on the night-time industries and wondered if I could request any figures on pub and restaurant closures as well as for spending over the Christmas period from 2018 to 2022.

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request enquiring the total number of pub closure from 2018 to 2021.

We produce an annual publication UK Business activity, size and location. Data in this publication records the numbers of enterprises (businesses) and local units (sites) by geography and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC). We have created a summary of the SIC Section 56 - Food and Beverage service activities and attach this in the accompanying spreadsheet. You will see restaurant figures are on line 9 and pubs and bars on line 15 for each of the requested years. This information is drawn from our data dissemination tool NOMIS which can be accessed here:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/construct/summary.asp?mode=construct&version=0&dataset=141

Should you wish to discuss this data or have any other queries please feel free to contact the data analysis team on IDBRAS@ons.gov.uk.

The ONS also produce an additional publication that may be useful in your research called Business Demography. This publication provides the count of business births (registrations) and deaths (deregistration's) on an annual basis. Please note this information is reported using the number of Enterprises (businesses) and not Local Units (sites).