The busiest towns.
New companies registered over the last twelve months, by the post town on the registered office address, or, where that office is a formation agent, by the town the company's directors run their other companies from.
London is counted as a single post town, so it is not really in the same contest as the rest of the list. It took 5.1 times as many new companies last year as Birmingham, more than the next eight towns put together. Leaving it in the ranking below would squash every other bar to a stub, so it sits up here on its own.
Ranked 2 to 25, without London
Bars scaled to Birmingham at 13,409, not to London
The remaining 1,051 towns are in the table below, each with its own page. A town's figure is the total of its trade rows: a company carrying more than one SIC code sits in more than one trade, and a company whose codes fall outside all 39 trades is not counted at all.
The same towns, by county.
Each town sits in the county most of its companies write in their address, so these are the postal counties.
Greater London 69,441 · West Midlands 30,208 · Essex 27,386 · Middlesex 22,095 · Lancashire 20,103 · Kent 19,030 · West Yorkshire 18,021 · Surrey 17,489 · Greater Manchester 14,330 · Cheshire 11,732 · Hertfordshire 11,729 · Hampshire 11,067 · Lanarkshire 10,195 · Merseyside 9,629 · Berkshire 9,465 · South Yorkshire 9,035 · Leicestershire 8,429 · Buckinghamshire 8,014 · Nottinghamshire 7,656 · Bedfordshire 7,079 · Tyne and Wear 6,955 · Staffordshire 6,338 · Cambridgeshire 6,284 · North Yorkshire 5,912 · Northamptonshire 5,905 · Lincolnshire 5,758 · Derbyshire 5,679 · West Sussex 5,253 · Devon 5,181 · East Sussex 5,056 · County Durham 4,722 · Dorset 4,556 · Norfolk 4,457 · Oxfordshire 4,303 · Somerset 4,155 · Midlothian 3,984 · Wiltshire 3,861 · Gloucestershire 3,756 · Warwickshire 3,719 · Suffolk 3,587 · East Yorkshire 3,306 · County Antrim 3,164 · Worcestershire 3,130 · Shropshire 2,444 · Cornwall 2,236 · Mid Glamorgan 2,202 · Cumbria 2,023 · County Down 1,664 · Fife 1,660 · Northumberland 1,235 · Renfrewshire 1,183 · West Lothian 1,145
All 1,076 towns.
Every town with enough new companies to count reliably, busiest first. The last column is how many of the 39 trades have enough volume in that town for a page of their own: no town carries all 39, while Bonnybridge, the quietest here, carries 0.
Towns come from the post town on the registered office address, except where that office is a formation agent: those companies are counted in the town established from their directors' other companies, or not counted at all. Towns too small for the counts to mean anything are left out entirely, so the rows above do not add up to every company on the register. Only companies still on the register at the 1 November 2026 snapshot are counted. The formation-agent test, with the figures.
See the same counts by trade instead · The long view, year by year · How the counts are made
298,620 new companies, registered March to November 2026. Any month from £15.
298,620 companies registered across the UK in March to November 2026 are in the file, each with its name, number, registered address, directors and trade. Every company registered, with its website, email and phone number where we can find one. Most companies this new have no website yet, so many rows will be the company, its address and its directors.
Bought per trade, or as one file for a family of trades. National, the whole UK; filter by town in the file. Any month from £15. 3p a company, £15 minimum an order. Pick one month, any mix, or everything.
- Construction 42,816 companies £1156.03
- Property investment & letting 41,417 companies £1118.26
- Online retail 33,130 companies £894.51
- Management consultancy 23,346 companies £630.34
- Web & software development 18,602 companies £502.25
- Every trade, with its count and price
Every list shows its count and price before you pay. Pay by card; within a minute an email tells you when your file will arrive.
Not ready to buy? Every one of the 39 trades has a free sample: its 25 newest companies, with each one's registered address and directors, as a CSV. Pick the trade.