Calculating Business Start-Up Rates – Population Based
Business start up rates (business births) are measured using VAT/PAYE
registrations which are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in their
Business Demography publication. More information about the publication and
business start-ups is available on the Data Sources and Suitability section of our
website:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/SourcesandSuitability/
BusDemo
The Business Demography publication contains data on the number of VAT/PAYE
registrations. It also provides information on registration rates but these are
measured as a proportion of the active business stock as opposed to the rate per
10,000 resident adults (which is the official measure of business start-ups in
Scotland). It is therefore necessary to calculate business start-up rates per 10,000
resident adults manually, which are then published on the Scottish Neighbourhood
Statistics (SNS) website. The SNS site contains the raw numbers of VAT/PAYE
registrations as well as the rate.
The purpose of this note is to show users how to access the data they are interested
in and how to calculate the rates per 10,000 resident adults themselves if they wish
to. This may be of particular interest to people who wish to calculate business startup rates for a collection of local authority areas (see Section D). Whilst this note
focuses on business births, users should be aware that the same method is used to
calculate the business death rate per 10,000 adult population.
A: Accessing Business Start-Up Rates on SNS
http://www.sns.gov.uk
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Go to Advanced Reporter and select level of geography you are interested in
(either Scotland or Local Authorities).
Under ‘Topic’ select Business, Enterprise and Energy then select Business
births, deaths and survival rates.
Under ‘Available Topics and Indicators’ select VAT/PAYE registrations per
10,000 adults for the years you are interested in.
B: Calculating Business Start-Up Rates - Scotland
1. Obtain VAT/PAYE Registration Data:
http://www.sns.gov.uk
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Go to Advanced Reporter and select level of geography you are interested in
(either Scotland or Local Authorities).
Under ‘Topic’ select Business, Enterprise and Energy then select Business
births, deaths and survival rates.
Under ‘Available Topics and Indicators’ select VAT/PAYE registrations for the
years you are interested in.
2. Obtain adult population (16+) data:
http://www.sns.gov.uk
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Go to Advanced Reporter and select level of geography you are interested in
(either Scotland or Local Authorities).
Under ‘Topic’ select Population then select Mid-Year Estimates, then Persons.
For the years you are interested in, select Total Population – Working Age and
Total Population – Pensionable Age 1 .
Add the two population figures together to obtain total adult population.
3. Calculate the business start up rate per 10,000 adults for the required region
using the following formula:
VAT/PAYE registrations x 10,000
adult population (16+)
1
Indicator is based on adult population aged 16+ and NOT working age population. It is possible to
select the individual age groups that make up this 16+ age group – but the method outlined above is
much simpler.
C: Calculating Business Start-Up Rates - UK
This section describes how to calculate the business start-up rate for other regions in
the UK. This information is not on the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics website,
therefore the component parts must be obtained directly from the respective data
sources. This method can be used to obtain business start-up rates for other UK
countries, Government Office Regions and Local Authority areas throughout the UK.
1. Obtain VAT/PAYE Registration Data:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_commerce/Business-Demography2009.xls
Scroll down worksheets to level of geography you are interested in.
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The most recent year’s data are in Table 1.1.
Previous years’ data are in Table 1.3
2. Obtain adult population (16+) data:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15106
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Choose relevant year and open zip file. Select workbook of relevant level of
geography (Table 8 for local authority area data)
Add the data in the columns labelled ‘Working Age’ and ‘Older People’ to get 16+
population.
3. Calculate the business start up rate per 10,000 adults for the required region
using the following formula:
VAT/PAYE registrations x 10,000
adult population (16+)
D: Calculating Business Start-Up Rates – Combined Area
This section describes how to calculate business start-up rates for a non-standard
area. For example, you may be interested in the business start-up rate for the whole
of Ayrshire which covers East, North and South Ayrshire. This is not available from
the published data but it is possible to calculate it from the individual Local Authority
data.
1. Obtain VAT/PAYE Registration Data:
http://www.sns.gov.uk
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Obtain VAT/PAYE registration data for the LAs you are interested in by following
Step 1 in Section B.
Add together the number of VAT/PAYE registrations for each LA you are
interested in.
e.g. East Ayrshire: 255
North Ayrshire: 260
South Ayrshire: 310
825
2. Obtain adult population (16+) data:
http://www.sns.gov.uk
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Obtain population data for the LAs you are interested in by following Step 2 in
Section B. Remember to add ‘working age’ and ‘pensionable age’ populations
together.
Add together the populations of the LAs you are interested in.
e.g. East Ayrshire: 98,866
North Ayrshire: 110,943
South Ayrshire: 93,218
303,027
3. Calculate the business start up rate per 10,000 adults:
VAT/PAYE registrations x 10,000
adult population (16+)
=
825
× 10,000
303,027
= 27 start-ups per 10,000 adult population