Pub closures and their locations between 2017 to 2022

FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4262

You asked

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide me with data on the number of pub closures and their location for the last five years.

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request enquiring the total number of pub closure for the last 5 years.

We produce an annual publication called Business Demography that measures both business births and business deaths. Data in the publication are taken from the Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) and consist of businesses registered with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Value Added Tax (VAT) and/or Pay as You Earn (PAYE).

Please see attached spreadsheet titled Pub closure statistics Table 1 shows the count of VAT and/or PAYE business deaths classified to SIC 56302: Public houses and bars: for the years 2020 to 2016 by regions in the United Kingdom.

Business demography measures businesses that were active throughout the reference year. The reference period is December, and therefore the 2020 publication measures businesses that were active between December 2019 and December 2020. Being active means that the business had either turnover or employment at any time during the reference year. The file of active businesses is compared with previous and subsequent files in order to identify business births and deaths and up to five-year survival rates. Please note the deaths data for 2019 and 2020 are provisional.

In addition to our annual Business Demography publication, we produce demography statistics on a quarterly basis. However, these data are experimental and are produced using alternative methodology.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact our IDBR data service team via idbrdas@ons.gov.uk.