They are an indicator of the level of entrepreneurship and of the health of the business population. As such they are used widely in regional and local economic planning. To make the figures as comparable as possible over time, a number of adjustments are made. The figures for recent years are increased slightly to allow for the small number of registrations and de-registrations that take more than a few months to be reported. The figures are also adjusted to allow for changes to the VAT system.
Many factors influence the pattern of business start-ups.
The DTI and ONS publications complement each other, although adjustments and minor differences in coverage mean that they contain slightly different estimates of the registered business population.