More than 10.7 million UK companies no longer exist. That figure — drawn from BORSCH.AI’s analysis of 16.6 million company records across 53 government data sources — reframes how we think about British entrepreneurialism. For every active company trading today, roughly two have already been dissolved. Understanding where businesses are being formed, which sectors are dominating, and what the current distress signals look like is no longer a luxury for due diligence teams. It’s a baseline requirement.
The Scale of UK Business Formation — and Failure
The headline number is stark: of the 16,677,531 companies ever registered at Companies House, only 5,241,727 are currently active. That’s a survival rate of just 31.4%.
| Status | Count | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| Dissolved | 10,742,846 | 64.4% |
| Active | 5,241,727 | 31.4% |
| Active – Proposal to Strike Off | 545,082 | 3.3% |
| Liquidation | 119,427 | 0.7% |
| Converted/Closed | 18,602 | 0.1% |
| In Administration | 3,546 | <0.1% |
| Voluntary Arrangement | 543 | <0.1% |
The 545,082 companies currently flagged as “Active – Proposal to Strike Off” deserve particular attention. These are businesses that technically remain live but are in the early stages of being removed from the register — often for failure to file. Combined with the 119,427 companies in liquidation and 3,546 in administration, that’s over 668,000 companies in some form of active distress — representing approximately 12.7% of all currently active businesses.
For credit risk teams, lenders, and due diligence analysts, this is not background noise. It is a live signal.
Where Businesses Are Being Built: The Geography of UK Enterprise
London’s dominance over the rest of the UK is well documented, but the scale of that dominance in company formation data is still striking.
| City | Active Companies |
|---|---|
| London | 1,155,104 |
| Manchester | 115,596 |
| Birmingham | 104,868 |
| Glasgow | 78,225 |
| Cardiff | 67,562 |
| Edinburgh | 61,144 |
| Bristol | 60,573 |
| Leeds | 56,786 |
| Liverpool | 51,394 |
| Nottingham | 48,425 |
London accounts for 22% of all active UK companies — and among the top 15 cities by company count, London holds 58.3% of the total. Manchester, the second-ranked city, has fewer than one-tenth of London’s registered businesses.
What’s notable further down the table is the emergence of Harrow (32,087) and Ilford (31,754) — both outer London boroughs — ranking above Coventry (31,392) and Sheffield (38,779). This reflects the well-documented trend of small limited companies being registered at residential addresses in London’s suburbs, often by sole traders and property investors structuring their assets.
The Sector Story: Real Estate Dominates, Tech Is Rising
Sector data tells the most revealing story about how the UK economy has reshaped itself over the past decade.
| SIC Code | Sector | Active Companies |
|---|---|---|
| 68209 | Letting/operating leased real estate | 280,347 |
| 68100 | Buying and selling own real estate | 255,981 |
| 70229 | Management consultancy | 229,353 |
| 82990 | Business support services | 195,677 |
| 47910 | Internet retail | 176,834 |
| 62020 | IT consultancy | 138,645 |
| 96090 | Other service activities | 130,064 |
| 98000 | Residents’ property management | 126,999 |
| 41100 | Development of building projects | 123,928 |
Three real estate SIC codes alone — 68209, 68100, and 98000 — account for 663,327 active companies. That’s 12.6% of all active businesses in the UK organised around property. This reflects a structural long-term trend: UK landlords and property investors routinely incorporate to manage tax efficiency, particularly following changes to mortgage interest relief for individual landlords introduced via the Finance Act 2015 (phased in from 2017).
The 802,299 companies holding mortgages on our platform lends further weight to this picture — a significant proportion of UK corporate activity is asset-backed property holding, not trading operations.
On the technology side, 176,834 internet retail businesses and 138,645 IT consultancies signal the scale of the digital economy pivot. Together these two categories represent over 315,000 registered companies — more than any single real estate category — and almost certainly undercount the true technology-enabled business population, given many tech companies self-describe under broader codes.
The Digital Footprint Gap: Most UK Businesses Are Invisible Online
One of the most counterintuitive findings from BORSCH.AI’s enriched dataset concerns how few active UK businesses have a verified online presence.
Of the 5,280,503 companies enriched with additional data signals:
| Data Point | Companies | % of Enriched |
|---|---|---|
| With verified website | 387,664 | 7.3% |
| With verified phone | 62,655 | 1.2% |
| With verified email | 58,038 | 1.1% |
This is not primarily a data gap — it reflects the true composition of UK limited companies. The majority are single-director property vehicles, dormant holding companies, or early-stage entities with no trading presence. For anyone conducting KYC, vendor onboarding, or counterparty due diligence, the absence of a website is not itself a red flag. But when combined with other signals — no filed accounts, proposal to strike off, director disqualification history — it contributes meaningfully to a risk profile.
What 48 Million Signals Actually Tell Us
BORSCH.AI’s platform currently aggregates 48,152,729 signals across 16,228,468 company records, drawing from 53 sources including Companies House, HM Land Registry, the FCA register, ICO, HMRC’s AML supervised business list, and the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database.
The signal distribution by category reveals where the data is richest:
| Category | Signal Count |
|---|---|
| Governance | 32,866,570 |
| Financial | 7,675,105 |
| Risk | 3,728,538 |
| Compliance | 2,925,226 |
| Trade | 405,220 |
| ESG | 117,125 |
| Innovation | 43,252 |
Governance signals — drawn from Companies House officers data (22.4M records), PSC (Persons with Significant Control) filings (11.9M records), and XBRL accounts (5.5M records) — form the backbone of any serious business intelligence picture. The 687,373 HM Land Registry signals and 595,553 ICO Data Protection registrations add dimensions of physical asset exposure and data handling compliance that Companies House data alone cannot provide.
This layering is precisely what separates actionable intelligence from raw registry data.
What This Means for Your Business
Three immediate takeaways for practitioners:
For due diligence analysts: The 545,082 companies flagged for strike-off represent a real-time counterparty risk signal. Any procurement, credit, or investment process should screen against this list — not just active status.
For compliance officers: The 3,003 companies appearing in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database and 9,322 in OpenSanctions represent a small but critical subset requiring enhanced due diligence. Cross-referencing these against beneficial ownership (PSC) data adds the layer that regulatory frameworks increasingly demand.
For investors and lenders: The concentration of UK corporate activity in property (663,327 companies across three real estate SIC codes, 802,299 mortgage-bearing entities) means any portfolio with UK SME exposure has more real estate risk embedded in it than sector classification alone would suggest.
The UK business landscape is more dynamic — and more fragile — than headline formation numbers imply. 64% dissolution rates, 12.7% of active businesses in distress, and a property sector that quietly dominates the corporate register: these are the patterns that matter.
Explore the full depth of BORSCH.AI’s 48M+ signal dataset across 5.9M UK companies at borsch.ai. Run sector screens, director searches, and real-time risk assessments in minutes.
Disclaimers
Disclaimer: This article was generated with AI assistance using data from Borsch.AI’s aggregation of 53 UK government sources. While all statistics are derived from real data, analysis and interpretation are AI-generated and should be independently verified.
Disclaimer: Data presented reflects information available at the time of publication and may not reflect the most current state. Source data is aggregated from public government registers which may contain delays, errors, or omissions.
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