My name’s Gemma Hendy and I work as a statistical analyst in the Statistical and Integrity Analysis team within Analysis and Corporate Insight (ACI). We provide analysis and insight into the data Companies House collects.
I’m fairly new to Companies House. I started in January, but still use this excuse when I get lost in the building (which happens more regularly than I’d care to admit).
I’m actually still relatively new to the Civil Service. In January 2016, I joined the Office for National Statistics (ONS) through the Government Statistical Service recruitment and stayed there for almost 2 years, before coming to Companies House.
That’s enough about me.
The team behind the statistics
There are 15 of us within the wider team, and we all do a range of things. Throughout the team, there are data compilers and analysts who have a range of responsibilities – including coding, providing visualisations and statistical analysis, to name a few. The people on the team have a lot of different skills for this.
Some of the team have been in the organisation quite a long time. Others are still new and learning their way around (just like me). The average length of time on the team is 5.6 years, which means our team has a lot of knowledge about Companies House!
About our official statistics
One of my main responsibilities is the official statistics produced by Companies House. We publish 2 different official statistics releases: Incorporated companies in the UK and Companies register activities. These cover the number of companies we’ve incorporated, dissolved and everything in between!
Our statistics include the analysis of companies on the register by the period of incorporation, companies removed from the register and other corporate bodies we deal with, such as limited partnerships and limited liability partnerships. The release includes collective statistics for the United Kingdom, plus separate statistics for England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.
One of the main figures commented on is the size of the register – the total number of companies and other corporate bodies in the UK.
Our statistics are used by the government, the public, public bodies and businesses, for a variety of reasons. This includes monitoring policy changes, understanding the market and making location decisions for companies.
Our official statistics are also used for secondary analysis, such as spotting trends and patterns. The results of the analysis can prompt the users to dig deeper into the data.
User consultation… is open
It’s an exciting time for statistics at Companies House! We’ve recently opened a user consultation for feedback on our annual official statistics.
User needs are important. We want to spend our time producing relevant statistics for our users.
We’re asking for your views on the tables and the commentary we publish alongside the publication tables. Any feedback we receive will be taken into consideration, and we may use this to make changes to our next publication, due in the summer of 2019. We want to understand what matters to you and the impact of our data on you, your work and the decisions you make based on our data.
Access the consultation on Companies House statistical products.
The survey will only take 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
The consultation will close on 30 September 2018. We’ll publish a summary of our findings within approximately 12 weeks of this closing date.
If you’d like to get in touch with the ACI team, you can email statistics@companieshouse.gov.uk.
To keep in touch, sign up to email updates from this blog, or follow us on Twitter.
