Over the last two years, the number of companies in the UK has grown by 417,309 – an increase of 11 per cent during the course of the Parliament.
The statistics come from company formation specialists Inform Direct, using data from Companies House and the Office of National Statistics.
At the start of the last parliament two years ago, there were 3,622,024 companies registered, rising to 4,039,333 at the dissolution.
Of the companies in existence at the last election, 79 per cent are still in business.
Comparing company growth in different political constituencies, Labour tops the table with an average of 758 net additional companies per constituency, the Conservatives have an average of 609 and Lib Dems an average of 317.
The highest rate of growth was Holborn and St Pancras – the constituency of Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer – with 18,965 new companies formed.
This position is reversed from the previous parliament where Conservative constituencies were more successful than Labour in growing the number of companies.
Only ten out of 650 constituencies saw the number of companies based there decrease. These include Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry whose Islington South and Finsbury constituency saw the number of companies down by 1,101 and only 63 per cent of companies active at the start of the Parliament still trading in May 2017.
Party leaders saw a high percentage of companies established at the start of the Parliament and still active: Theresa May (Maidenhead) 84.9 per cent; Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) 77.7 per cent; and Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) 88.4 per cent.
John Korchak, operations director at Inform Direct says, ‘These figures show that over the two years of the last Parliament, we saw healthy growth in the formation of new businesses which demonstrates a favourable environment for companies to thrive.
‘It is interesting that the highest growth was in Labour constituencies – a complete reverse of the previous Parliament. In some cases this may be a return to the norm of urban areas outperforming more rural constituencies. In others, local Labour MPs – perhaps particularly those disengaged from the Labour leadership in Westminster – may instead be spending time pursuing local initiatives to encourage corporate growth.’
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