VAT Registered Enterprises by Employment Size in Rural England and Wales, 2005-2007

Office for National Statistics data provides counts of VAT-registered enterprises by employment size band in areas classified as rural. The dataset covers England and Wales from 2005 to 2007 and is available at multiple geographic levels including Middle Layer Super Output Area and Local Authority District. It originates from the ONS Business Registers Unit and is published under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of business sizes in rural economies based on employment band counts.
• Compare rural enterprise demographics across different UK geographies like Local Authority Districts.
• Track changes in the rural business landscape over the 2005-2007 period.
• Model the relationship between rurality and business scale using administrative register data.

Strengths

• Data covers a three-year time range from 2005 to 2007.
• Provides geographic breakdowns at four levels: MSOA, LAD, GOR, and National.
• Sourced from the authoritative ONS Business Registers Unit administrative data.

Limitations

• Data is over 15 years old; freshness should be verified for current applications.
• Row count and column-level documentation are absent, limiting suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics (ONS) Business Registers Unit (BRU)

Collection Method

Administrative data

Time Range

2005 to 2007

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:41.806790; the underlying data is from 2005-2007.

Geography

England and Wales