FOI reference: FOI-2026-3730
You asked
I am writing to request information on the number of self-employed people who work from or operate their business from home in the UK.
Please could you provide the following information for each calendar year from 2019 to 2025, where available:
- The estimated number of self-employed people in the UK.
- The estimated number of self-employed people in the UK whose main place of work is their own home.
- The estimated number of self-employed people in the UK who use their home as a base for work, if this is recorded separately.
For points 2 and 3, please could you also provide the figures as a percentage of all self-employed people in the relevant year.
Where available, please could you provide the figures requested broken down by:
- UK country and English region
- Industry
- Age group
- Sex
We are particularly interested in people who run or operate a business from their residential property. If the measures above do not specifically identify this group, please could you provide any available ONS measure which most closely identifies self-employed people who operate or run their business primarily from their home, and explain the definition used.
We said
Thank you for your request relating to the number of self-employed people in the UK who work from, or operate their business from, home and the availability of breakdowns by geography and demographic characteristics.
We publish type of employment breakdowns for calendar years using data from the Annual Population Survey (APS), which is based on interviews with people resident in private households across the UK. Estimates for the number of self-employed people in the UK for each calendar year from 2019 to 2025 are available through NOMIS.
We have not previously produced estimates on the number of self-employed people in the UK whose main place of work is their own home or the number of self-employed people in the UK who use their home as a base for work. However, the APS contains information on respondents' usual place of work, including whether they work:
in their own home
in the same grounds or buildings as their home
in different places using their home as a base
somewhere quite separate from home
These categories are available in the "HOME" variable for people in employment, including those who are self-employed.
Since the APS also contains information on geographies and demographics (see APS and Labour Force Survey guides, mainly Volumes 3 and 6 for more details on the variables containing such information) it would be possible to obtain estimates for self-employed people who work in their own home, and self-employed people who use their home as a base for work, broken down by geography and demographic characteristics. However, there are sample size limitations to how granular estimates can be, so breaking down self-employed who work in their own home or use home as a base for work by industry, region or many age groups would be unlikely to produce usable or reliable estimates.
If you still wish to obtain this information despite these limitations, you can request an ad hoc APS analysis by contacting our Social Surveys team at socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk. Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs. Please note, there will be a charge for this work, which would be subject to our charging policy. As this information is reasonably accessible via another route, even if only accessible on payment, Section 21(2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
Users wishing to undertake their own analysis may be able to access Annual Population Survey (APS) microdata through the UK Data Service. Information on accessing APS datasets can be found via the UK Data Service. Users should consult the relevant dataset documentation and access conditions to determine whether the data are suitable for their intended analysis.