Home › Guides › UK local business data
UK local business data: finding the premises that directories miss
Most UK B2B lists start from a directory, which means they start from businesses that chose to be listed. The food hygiene register starts from somewhere better: every premises a council inspector actually visited. This guide covers that register, how to join it to Companies House for the legal entity, and where the charity register fits.
Why the hygiene register beats a directory
Local authorities inspect every food business in the UK and publish the result: premises name, full address, business type, hygiene rating and inspection date. Three properties make this unusually good source data:
- Inclusion is mandatory. A directory contains businesses that opted in — which systematically over-represents those already spending on marketing and under-represents the independent takeaway that has never had a website. The hygiene register contains everyone.
- The address is inspector-verified. Somebody physically attended. No scraped directory can say that.
- Business type is a real classification. Restaurant, takeaway, pub, hotel, school, care home, supermarket, manufacturer, distributor — these are assigned by the inspecting authority, not self-declared.
For anyone selling into hospitality — EPOS systems, delivery platforms, food distribution, commercial kitchen equipment, insurance — this is the closest thing to a census of the addressable market.
UK food business & hygiene rating data →
The rating itself is a segmentation signal
The 0–5 rating is not only a compliance fact. Read across a territory it separates segments that behave differently:
| Rating | What it suggests | Commercial reading |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Systems and documentation in place | Professionalised operator; buys software, often multi-site |
| 3–4 | Broadly compliant, gaps noted | The large middle; most volume sits here |
| 0–2 | Major improvement required | Under pressure — relevant for compliance and training vendors, and a caution for credit terms |
A recent inspection date alongside a low rating is a business with an active problem. That is a real timing signal, and it is published.
Joining premises to the legal entity
The register records a trading name at an address, not a registered company. That distinction matters more than it looks: one company frequently operates many premises, and a premises-level list will show you forty separate rows where there is one customer with forty sites.
The fix is to match into Companies House, which gives you the company number, incorporation date, registered address, officers and PSC (person with significant control) records. Match on address plus name rather than name alone — trading names and registered names diverge constantly, and cross-source name matching fails often enough to matter.
Once matched you can answer questions the premises list cannot: how old is the operator, how many sites does it run, who controls it, and is it filing on time.
Charities: a separate segment with separate rules
The Charity Commission register publishes registered charities with their number, stated activities, income and expenditure bands and trustee information. Two uses:
- As a market segment. Charities buy differently — different budget cycles, different procurement rules, often different pricing expectations. Treating them as ordinary companies in a sales list produces poor targeting.
- As a verification step. If an organisation claims charitable status, the register is where you check. Income bands also give you a size proxy that no company-register field provides for this sector.
A complete UK company picture
| Question | Source |
|---|---|
| Which food premises exist in this postcode area? | FSA hygiene register |
| Who legally owns this business? | Companies House — officers and PSC |
| Is this organisation a registered charity? | Charity Commission register |
| Does it hold public-sector contracts? | Contracts Finder awards |
| Is it hiring? | ATS job boards |
| Does it sell online? | Shopify detection |
Three practical cautions
- A rating is a snapshot. It reflects one inspection on one date. Presenting a two-year-old rating as current misrepresents the business — carry the inspection date with the rating, always.
- Premises ≠ company. Deduplicate to the operator before counting your market, or you will badly overstate it.
- Small operators are often sole traders. They will have no Companies House record at all, because no company exists. An unmatched premises is not necessarily a failed match.
Deduplicating premises to operators: a worked example
The premises-to-company gap is worth making concrete, because it changes market-size numbers by an order of magnitude.
Suppose you pull every food premises in a metropolitan area and get 4,000 rows. That is not 4,000 prospects. Inside it are the branches of national chains, the sites of regional multi-site operators, franchise locations trading under one brand but owned separately, and genuinely independent single-site businesses. Sold as "4,000 addressable businesses", that list will underperform badly, because most outreach will land on a branch manager with no purchasing authority.
A workable deduplication sequence:
- Group by normalised premises name. Crude, but it collapses the obvious chains immediately.
- Match survivors into Companies House on name plus address. The company number becomes your real key.
- Count distinct company numbers — that is your operator count, and it is the number that means something.
- Keep the site count per operator as an attribute. It is one of the best size signals you will get for hospitality, where headcount data is scarce and unreliable.
Franchises are the genuinely hard case: same brand, same fascia, different legal owners, and the register will show separate companies while the premises names look identical. If you group only by name you will merge businesses that are separate customers. The company number is the arbiter — brand is not.
Note too that an unmatched premises is not a failed match. Many small operators are sole traders with no company at all, so there is nothing in Companies House to find. That is a valid outcome and a useful segment marker in its own right.
Frequently asked questions
What is the hygiene rating scheme?
A statutory scheme where councils inspect every UK food business and publish a 0–5 rating with the premises name, address, type and inspection date.
Why not just use a directory?
Directories list businesses that opted in. The hygiene register lists every premises inspected, address-verified by the inspector.
Does it tell me the company?
No — it records the trading name at an address. Match into Companies House for the legal entity, officers and PSC.
Can I use it commercially?
It is published openly for reuse and describes premises, not individuals. Attribute it, and always show the inspection date alongside the rating.