Business Population Increases To 4.9m

the business population of the UK was estimated to have increased by 102,000 to 4.9m at the start of 2013 according to statistics from the Business Department (BIS) and the ONS. It continues a steady growth since 2000 and 2013 is the highest estimate yet.

The rise is mainly due to the increase in the number of small, non-employing businesses, up 127,000. The growth is offset by a fall in the number of employing businesses of 26,000.

The 4.9m private sector businesses employed a total of 24.3m people and had a combined turnover of £3,300bn. Of these 99.9% are SMEs employing 14.4m people (59.3% of private sector employment) accounting for £1,600bn or 48.1% of private sector turnover.

The majority of private sector businesses were sole proprietorships, 28.5% were companies and 8.9% were partnerships and 75.3% did not employ anyone beside the business owner.

Record Number Of Small Business In UK

The Office for National Statistics and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills recently released statistics concerning small and medium sized enterprises for the UK and regions for 2009. It gives estimates of the numbers of SMEs in the UK the employment they provide and their turnover.

The release says that there were 4.8m enterprises in the private sector at the beginning of 2009, an increase of 1.1% or 51,000 on 2008 and the highest number since these records began in 1994. They employed 22.8m people and their combined turnover was an estimated £3,200bn. Although SMEs account for 99.9% of all enterprises, they accounted for 59.8% of private sector employment and only 49% of private sector turnover. The turnover increased in 2009 by an estimated 5.8% or £1,589bn on 2008.

Most, 99.3%, of the SMEs were small (0-49 employees) and only 27,000 were medium sized (50-249). There were only 6,000 large enterprises (over 250 employees) in the UK in 2008. The number of people employed by SMEs fell by 309,000 or -1.3% since 2008. The number of sole proprietorships increased for the seventh year in a row, by 65,000, to 3.1m. The total number of businesses without employees was 3.6m, up 68,000. They account for 74.8% of all private sector enterprises and a combined turnover of £240bn at the beginning of 2008. Partnerships decreased by 18,000 to 444,000.

Small Business Downward Trend Expected To Slow

The CBI's latest SME Trends Survey shows that output has gone down at the fastest pace of decline for more than 20 years. The factor most likely to limit output will be sales and orders. The report also shows a fall of 64% in total new orders, the steepest fall since CBI records began, with 13% reporting an increase. The volume of output reported shows a 57% decline. Employment figures were no better with 50% of respondents reporting record increase in job losses, only 6% taking on new staff.

The number of firms working below capacity has continued to rise for over a year with 74% now running below capacity and companies are also still running down stocks. Export orders are weak. Credit and financial worries are still a problem and may limit exports. Average domestic prices continued to decline and costs continued to rise as imports are becoming more expensive.

Investment intentions are low and uncertainty about demand is likely to be a factor limiting plans to invest. However, general business sentiment is up as the decline in orders, output and employment is expected to slow down over the next three months.