The Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) is a list of UK businesses maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and combines the former Central Statistical Office (CSO) VAT based business register and the former Employment Department (ED) employment statistics system. It complies with European Union Regulation (EC) No 177/2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes.
What are its uses?
It provides a sampling frame for surveys of businesses carried out by the ONS and by other government departments. It is also a key data source for analysis of business activity.
Why was the IDBR set up?
Both the CSO and ED collected key economic data from businesses for use in compiling the national accounts. The use of two different registers resulted in inconsistencies, including different estimates of employment, because of differences in classification and coverage. The IDBR leads to a single and more reliable set of employment estimates, improving the consistency of the national accounts and the quality of the productivity and unit wage cost estimates.
What businesses are included?
The IDBR covers businesses in all parts of the economy, missing some very small businesses operating without VAT or PAYE schemes (self employed and those with low turnover and without employees) and some non-profit organisations, representing nearly 99 per cent of UK economic activity. The Department for Business Innovation & Skills makes an estimate of the total number of unregistered businesses in its Small And Medium Enterprise Statistics publication.
How is it updated?
The IDBR is updated from the following sources:
Value Added Tax (VAT)
Detail of businesses registered for VAT.
Covers over 1.7 million traders in 2009.
Provided by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) daily.
Pay As You Earn (PAYE)
Details of employers with employees in PAYE schemes.
Covers over 1.4 million employers in 2009.
Provided by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) quarterly.
National Statistics Surveys based on the IDBR
During 2007/08 ONS conducted 68 surveys of business and local authorities on its own behalf, issuing 1,449,789 survey questionnaires to some 267,000 businesses.
Company Registrations
Covers over two million incorporated businesses registered in Great Britain and over 29,100 incorporated businesses registered in Northern Ireland. Data provided by Companies House.
Of those incorporated businesses Dun and Bradstreet provides an annual extract of over 320,000 records detailing the group structures of approximately 70,000 global groups
.
What type of business units does it hold?
Administrative units
VAT trader and PAYE employer information forms the basis of the IDBR supplemented by information from Companies House on incorporated businesses.
Statistical units
A group of legal units under common ownership is called an enterprise group.
An enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units (generally based on VAT or PAYE) which has a certain degree of autonomy within an enterprise group.
An individual site (for example factory or shop) in an enterprise is called a local unit.
Observation unit
Reporting units hold the mailing address to which the survey forms are sent. The form can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.
What information is held for the units?
Name
Address including postcode
Standard Industrial Classification (SIC2007 and SIC2003)
Employment and employees
Turnover
Legal status (company, sole proprietor, partnership, public corporation/nationalised body, local authority or non-profit body)
Enterprise group links
Country of ownership
Company number
Intrastat marker for goods and services traded (imports & exports) between the EU member states and the UK
What classifications are held?
The IDBR holds data from a range of sources that may have their own systems for coding business activity. A new coding tool, Automated Classification Text Recognition (ACTR), assigns SIC codes from descriptions provided by businesses.
PAYE employer information from HMRC provides Standard Trade Classifications (STC) in the form of 4-digit Trade Classification Numbers (TCN). These are converted to SIC2007 and SIC2003 codes.
VAT trader data from HMRC provide SIC2007 codes.
Survey responses, either based on products or business descriptions, are converted to SIC2007 codes using ACTR which allocate a bridging code to link to SIC codes.
What turnover information is held?
VAT turnover from HMRC is updated annually. Reporting unit turnover may be updated from survey information. Where a unit’s turnover is unknown it will be calculated using turnover per head ratios which are calculated for each industry on an annual basis.
What employment figures are held?
Employees - paid full and part time workers at each local unit in the enterprise.
Employment - the employees plus any working proprietors (owners directly involved in the business). Working proprietors are usually 0 for a company, 1 for a sole proprietor or 2 or more for a partnership.
PAYE jobs - the jobs figure is the average of four quarters, based on quarterly updates from HMRC, and is calculated on an annual basis in June of each year.
Is the information held on the register confidential?
All the data on the IDBR are treated as RESTRICTED COMMERCIAL and are protected by the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and by specific legislation.
Who are the main users of the IDBR?
Department for Business Innovation & Skills
Department for Children, Schools and Families
Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment for Northern Ireland
Department for Environment, Food And Rural Affairs
Health and Safety Executive
HM Revenue & Customs
Office for National Statistics
Scottish Government
Welsh Assembly Government
Who else can use the IDBR?
Central Government - access to information for surveys and analysis.
Local Authorities and other government bodies - access to some disclosive data.
Government Contractors - Information for surveys and analysis as specified in their contracts.
General public - Access to analyses provided they are not disclosive.
What data is available from the IDBR?
An annual publication providing a size analysis of UK businesses is available free from the website for years 1995 onwards: - UK Business: Activity, Size and Location.
Datasets by low level geography Middle Layer - Super Output Area (MSOA) are available free of charge for download from the Neighbourhood Statisticswebsite.
The IDBR Data Analysis Service provides a bespoke analysis service tailored to users’ needs, for both confidential and public release data. For additional information please refer to: Standard Analysis from the IDBR – Non-disclosive data.
Disclosive data can be released to authorised outside bodies and contractors working for government departments. All requests for disclosive data will be reviewed by the ONS Micro Data Release Panel (MRP).
For additional information please refer to: Standard Analysis from the IDBR – Disclosive data.
Local Authorities within the meaning of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 can have access to disclosive data for their areas for planning and training purposes. For further details please refer to: Standard Analysis from the IDBR – Local Authorities.
How do I obtain data?
ONS publications are available from the Bookshelf.
The UK Business: Activity, Size and Location publication can be viewed from the Businesses summary. For queries relating to the publication please contact +44 (0) 1633 456902 or email: pa1003@ons.gov.uk
For information relating to the IDBR Bespoke Analysis Service please contact: +44 (0) 1633 456902 or email: IDBRDAS@ons.gov.uk
For general queries relating to IDBR please contact +44 (0) 1633 455200 or email: idbr.helpdesk@ons.gov.uk
