Regional selection
A company list for one city or sales territory is selected by postcode: by nation, by postcode area such as M for Manchester or EC for the City of London, or by postcode district. This page shows how the selection works, how many records we hold per nation and how many businesses the official statistics count per region.
Our dataset as at 4 November 2026 · ONS figures for March 2026 · page updated: 8 November 2026
In brief
We assign the nation using the postcode of the business address; for postcode districts that cross a border, the country that most of the district lies in. Records without a valid UK postcode, for example in the Crown Dependencies, have no nation.
| Nation | Records | of them active | with phone, email or website |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | 2,253,660 | 2,240,664 | 2,171,477 |
| Scotland | 204,521 | 203,227 | 194,607 |
| Wales | 113,238 | 112,682 | 107,920 |
| Northern Ireland | 63,971 | 63,589 | 60,871 |
| No nation assigned | 41,006 | 40,963 | 31,445 |
Source: our own dataset (Overture Maps and company websites), counted on 4 November 2026. More on the database status page.
A postcode area is the one or two letters at the start of a postcode. It is the quickest way to describe a city or a sales territory, but it is not a council boundary. The export contains the postcode area and the full postcode as separate columns, so you can refine a selection yourself afterwards.
| City | Postcode areas | Note |
|---|---|---|
| London | E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W, WC | the London postal district; outer boroughs also lie in BR, CR, DA, EN, HA, IG, KT, RM, SM, TW and UB, which reach beyond Greater London |
| Manchester | M | Manchester, Salford and neighbouring districts; Stockport is SK, Bolton BL, Oldham OL |
| Birmingham | B | Birmingham and surrounding towns such as Solihull and Sutton Coldfield |
| Leeds | LS | Bradford is BD, Wakefield WF |
| Liverpool | L | the Wirral is CH |
| Bristol | BS | also covers parts of South Gloucestershire and North Somerset |
| Glasgow | G | Paisley is PA, Motherwell ML |
| Edinburgh | EH | also covers the Lothians and the Scottish Borders in part |
| Cardiff | CF | also covers the South Wales valleys in part |
| Belfast | BT (districts) | BT covers all of Northern Ireland, so Belfast is selected by postcode district |
How large is the market in a region? The ONS counts businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE in each of the nine English regions and in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These figures describe the economy, not our dataset, and they leave out the smallest unregistered sole traders.
| Region or nation | Businesses | Share of the UK | Local units |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 552,505 | 19.8% | 611,340 |
| South East | 412,080 | 14.8% | 472,255 |
| East of England | 276,725 | 9.9% | 315,875 |
| North West | 272,085 | 9.8% | 319,345 |
| South West | 237,935 | 8.5% | 278,760 |
| West Midlands | 219,545 | 7.9% | 255,340 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 194,065 | 7.0% | 229,245 |
| East Midlands | 183,715 | 6.6% | 213,050 |
| Scotland | 176,000 | 6.3% | 219,565 |
| Wales | 106,170 | 3.8% | 128,250 |
| Northern Ireland | 81,665 | 2.9% | 96,935 |
| North East | 74,495 | 2.7% | 92,455 |
Source: ONS, UK business 2026 (published 24 September 2026), Tables 1 and 16; values rounded to 5 by the ONS. Legal status, births and deaths per region: businesses by nation and region.
A territory near a border needs care: a firm with a Chester address may work mainly in north-east Wales but counts as England. For field sales, include the neighbouring postcode areas. Before calling, screen the numbers against TPS and Corporate TPS; the rules are in PECR for B2B email and calls.
According to the ONS, UK business 2026, 552,505 businesses in London were registered for VAT and/or PAYE in March 2026, 19.8 per cent of the UK total of 2,786,985. They had 611,340 local units. These are official statistics, not the size of our dataset; the quote states how many records your London selection contains.
Yes, as a selection by postcode area (M) or by postcode district, combined with an industry if you like. The ONS does not publish a city figure in this table; the North West region, which includes Greater Manchester, had 272,085 registered businesses in March 2026.
On request. Counties and local authorities do not follow postcode boundaries, so we select by the postcodes that belong to the area and tell you in the quote how border districts were treated.
The postcode of the business address in the source, normally the trading address. For records without a valid UK postcode we use the region code of the map data; records without either have no nation and are not included in a regional selection.
Not yet. We publish our records per nation (table below) and state the number for a city or postcode area in the quote. A whole industry costs from £199; regional selections are quoted individually.
Send us the postcode areas or the region and the industry; we reply with the number of records and a price.
