During an early 2023 survey carried out among among people who run their own business or side hustle in the United Kingdom, **** percent stated they used TikTok as primary social media platforms used by small businesses for sales generation. Facebook ranked first, named by ** percent of respondents.

In 2025, there were approximately **** million small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the United Kingdom. Micro-sized enterprises that employ up to nine people constitute the majority of SMEs in the UK, at over *** million. Enterprises that have between 10 and 49 employees are classed as small enterprises, and numbered around ******* in the UK, while there were ****** medium-sized enterprises. Business landscape dominated by SMEs As of this year, the vast majority of business enterprises in the UK were SMEs, accounting for almost ** percent of private sector employment, and just over half of its collective turnover. Over ******* SMEs were based in the construction sector, with a further ******* in the professional, scientific, and technical activities sector. SMEs in wholesale and retail trade employed more people than both these sectors, however, at around **** million people. In terms of turnover Outlook for SMEs in 2025 Towards the end of 2024, ** percent of SMEs surveyed advised that increasing costs would be the main obstacle to running an SME in 2025, with a further ** percent indicating that the current economic climate would also be an obstacle. Higher than expected inflation, as well as tax increases for businesses, are just some of the challenges businesses are facing this year. Perhaps as a result, businesses have been shedding jobs for several months, with an increasing share of SMEs looking to either maintain current staffing levels, or to start cutting jobs.

Monthly dataset showing change in sales and jobs recorded by Xero, an online accounting software platform. This dataset is updated on a quarterly basis. These are official statistics in development. Source: Xero.

During an early 2023 survey carried out among among people who run their own business or side hustle in the United Kingdom, ** percent stated they used paid social media posts to market their business. ost used channel amogn the *** presented in the data set was organic/non-paid social media, named by ** percent of respondents.

In 2024, there were approximately 870,040 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the construction sector in the United Kingdom, the most of any sector in that year. The sector with the second-highest number of SMEs was the Professional, Scientific and Technical activities sector, at 754,520 SMEs.

Numbers of enterprises and local units produced from a snapshot of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) taken on 14 March 2025.

Success.ai’s UK SME Database gives your business a powerful edge in reaching verified small and medium-sized companies across the United Kingdom. Whether you’re selling business services, SaaS, finance tools, or logistics solutions—this dataset offers direct access to growth-stage companies that are ready to buy.

With rich company data and verified contact info for founders, directors, and operational managers, you’ll have everything needed to identify, engage, and convert high-potential UK SMEs.

Included Data Points:
- Company name and domain
- Business category and industry
- Company size (employee range)
- Location (city, postcode, region)
- Contact name, job title, email, LinkedIn

Why Success.ai?
- Covers 2.5M+ UK small and mid-sized businesses
- Verified data for owners, directors, and decision-makers
- Great for outreach in services, SaaS, HR, and legal sectors
- Curated for accuracy and delivered your way
- Best Price Guarantee – always competitive, always complete

Use Cases:
- B2B sales outreach to UK growth companies
- Local ABM for regional campaigns
- Market expansion for service providers
- SME-focused research and segmentation
- Email marketing and CRM enrichment

In 2024, there were approximately ******* small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in London, making it the region with the highest number of SMEs in the United Kingdom. By contrast, in the same year, there were just ******* SMEs in Northern Ireland, the fewest of any UK region.

In 2025, SME's in the UK collectively employed **** million people. In this year, micro-sized enterprises that had an employee headcount of nine or fewer employed around *** million people in the United Kingdom, with small businesses employing around *** million people, and medium-sized ones *** million.

in 2021, 6.1% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with employees and 4.9% of SMEs without employees were 'majority led' by people from an ethnic minority

SME - Synthetic UK Businesses financial statistics

Contains the financial and basic information about the 1000 small and medium enterprises in the UK. It contains attributes as far-reaching as the profit and losses of the entities and even their credit scores. It can be used to analyze the survival and success prediction of the enterprise.

This sample data is part of the statistically accurate representation of the UK economy that can be found at https://nayaone.com/digital-twin/. Our mission is democratization and quality data governance in areas where the lack of data is a major hurdle for innovation and progress. To learn more, contact us: contact@nayaone.com

Content

All the Synthetic datasets have been generated with programmatic stimulation to represent the real-world data. Description of the datasets are as follows: - Account Receivable: Funds that customers owe your company for products or services that have been invoiced. - Businesses: List of enterprises and their information - Covid: Financial stats of the companies during the pandemic waves - Credit Account History: History of a credit account and usage of - Credit Card History: History of the credit card usage and debt amount of an enterprise - Credit Rating: credit rating of listed businesses which is a quantified assessment of the creditworthiness of a borrower in general terms or with respect to a financial obligation. - Director: UK Individual who is on the Director position in companies listed in Businesses - Factoring: Financial transaction and a type of debtor finance in which a business sells its accounts receivable to a third party at a discount. - Individual: UK Individuals information - Loan: Information of the paid and unpaid Loans by the enterprise

Acknowledgements

The real data stats used to generate synthetic data are mainly gathered from the ONS, Public datasets and Known statistics.

Inspiration

This data can be used to train Machine learning models for better accuracy.

The Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS) is a large-scale telephone survey of small business owners and managers commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). This survey is the latest in a series of annual and biennial Small Business Surveys (SBS) dating back to 2003.

In 2015, the survey methodology changed to include a longitudinal tracking element. A large sample size was recruited in Year One (2015) to establish a panel of businesses to be re-surveyed in subsequent years. This will allow a detailed analysis of how combinations of factors affect business performance.

The LSBS is intended to:

• Improve the understanding of what drives and constrains business performance and growth by addressing evidence gaps relating to the lags between many business activities and associated performance outcomes;
• Provide improved data on current business performance and the factors that affect this. The larger survey size will provide more reliable findings for key sub-groups of the business population and in relation to activities such as seeking finance, which are only relevant to part of the sample.

The data available covers all respondents over the course of the six years so far. Further information and research reports are available on the GOV.UK "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/small-business-survey-reports"> Small Business Survey Reports webpage.

Controlled (Secure) Access Version
A Controlled (Secure) Access version of the LSBS is available from the UK Data Archive, subject to stringent secure access conditions. Extra variables include postcode district, 2-, 3-, and 4-digit SIC codes; and Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) reference numbers for linking to other business surveys. Small Business Survey data files for 2010 and 2012 containing 4-digit SIC codes and IDBR reference numbers are available under SN 6856. Users are strongly advised to check whether the safeguarded version is sufficient for their needs before considering an application for the Controlled (Secure) Access version.

Latest edition information
For the ninth edition (December 2024), the data and documentation have been updated to include Year 9 of the survey, completed during 2023-2024.

Percentage of VAT registered businesses showing year-on-year employment growth. This indicator will include those businesses registered for VAT with less than 50 employment (around 98% of all VAT registered enterprises). It will measure the proportion of those businesses showing year on year employment growth, where employment is measured as the number of employees (full and part-time) plus the number of self-employed people that run the business.

Findings of the Small Business Survey on the performance of small and medium-sized businesses with employees and with no employees. Official Statistics

Value and volume of retail sales broken down by size of business

Access 2.5 million verified UK small and medium-sized business profiles with decision-maker contacts and firmographics. Ideal for B2B sales and market expansion. Best Price Guarantee.

As of 2024, 40 percent of SMEs in the United Kingdom reported that increasing costs were one of the main obstacles to running their business, with a further 35 percent reporting the current economic climate as a main concern.