DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-7463-14
title: Business Register and Employment Survey, 2009-2023: Secure Access
title: BRES

description: &lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;Business Register and Employment Survey&lt;/i&gt; (BRES) is the official source of employee and employment estimates by detailed geography and industry. It is also used to update the &lt;i&gt;Inter-Departmental Business Register&lt;/i&gt; (IDBR), the main sampling frame for business surveys conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with information on the structure of businesses in the UK.&lt;br&gt;
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The survey collects employment information from businesses across the whole of the UK economy for each site that they operate. This allows the ONS to produce employee and employment estimates by detailed geography and industry split by full-time/part-time workers and whether the business is public/private.&lt;br&gt;
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The ONS produces a number of different measures of employment including &lt;i&gt;Workforce Jobs&lt;/i&gt; and the &lt;i&gt;Annual Population Survey/Labour Force Survey&lt;/i&gt;. However, BRES is the recommended source of information on employment by detailed geography and industry.&lt;br&gt;
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The BRES has two purposes: collecting data to update local unit information and business structures on the IDBR, and producing published annual employment statistics.&lt;br&gt;
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The BRES sample does not include Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland data are received direct from the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETINI) which are used to create UK estimates. The UK Data Archive holds data only for Great Britain.&lt;br&gt;
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The BRES replaced the &lt;i&gt;Annual Business Inquiry, Part 1&lt;/i&gt; (ABI/1) in 2009. ABI/1 data for 2009 and earlier are held as part of the &lt;i&gt;Annual Respondents Database&lt;/i&gt; under UK Data Archive SN 6644.&lt;br&gt;
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&lt;i&gt;Change in sampling from 2015-2016&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br&gt;
In 2015, ONS made a strategic decision to include business units with a single PAYE code for which VAT data are available. Prior to 2015, such units were excluded from the sampling frame and therefore not estimated for in ONS outputs. So from January 2016, the coverage of BRES was extended to include a population of solely PAYE based businesses. This improvement in coverage is estimated to have increased the business survey population by around 100,000 businesses, with a total of around 300,000 employment and 200,000 employees between December 2015 and January 2016. The increase in business population has led to an increase in the estimate of employment and employees for the 2015 dataset. Further information is available in documentation file '7463_bres_2015_change_in_firm_sampling.pdf'.&lt;br&gt;
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&lt;i&gt;Linking to other business studies&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br&gt;
These data contain &lt;i&gt;Inter-Departmental Business Register&lt;/i&gt; reference numbers. These are anonymous but unique reference numbers assigned to business organisations. Their inclusion allows researchers to combine different business survey sources together. Researchers may consider applying for other business data to assist their research.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;For Secure Lab projects applying for access to this study as well as to SN 6697 &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;Business Structure Database&lt;/span&gt; and/or SN 7683 &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;Business Structure Database Longitudinal&lt;/span&gt;, only postcode-free versions of the data will be made available.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;Latest edition information&lt;br&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For the fourteenth edition (September 2025), the 'revised 2022' and 'provisional 2023' data files have been added, along with a variable list for the same years.&lt;/p&gt;