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Lancashire Business Observatory

Lancashire's economy, in public data

Who trades in Lancashire, how firms fare, and where public money lands, built from the public registers that the county's economy already leaves behind. Every figure carries its source and its date, and every area is shown twice: as it is governed today, and as it will be under the four new unitary councils from April 2028.

This is a first, open look at the shape of the Lancashire business base, assembled the same way as the property map and the contracts record: from registers that are public by law. It counts active companies, watches for financial distress in the register, tracks where new firms are born and whether they survive, follows the official high-growth companies, and asks how much of each council's spending stays with locally rooted suppliers. The tools below go deeper on each.

Active companies across Lancashire
Companies per 1,000 residents
Average business birth rate
Areas beating England on high growth

Compare the areas

Every area, side by side. Switch between today's councils and the four unitaries that take over in 2028. Click any column heading to sort; click an area to open its full profile.

Clean distress rate excludes companies registered at flagged address clusters (large numbers of companies at a single address, most dissolved or striking off), so it does not overstate stress in one postcode. The raw rate is shown on each area profile. How this is worked out.

Area Companies / 1k Clean distress Birth rate % 3yr survival High growth Median pay

What this is

This is a journalistic publication on the use of public money in Lancashire, published in the public interest. Company profiles sit inside analysis; there is no directory or people-search feature. The privacy notice on the method page covers directors and persons with significant control, the lawful basis for publication, and how to object.

Scores are opinions, not facts

Data is compiled from public registers. Figures reflect the register at the retrieval date shown and may have changed. Scores and indicators are the Observatory's opinion, derived by the published methodology from public data; they are not statements of fact about solvency, creditworthiness or probity. This site does not provide credit or financial advice and must not be used for lending, trading or investment decisions. Transparency spending data covers payments over 500 pounds and is not a complete account of any body's budget.

Corrections

Spotted something wrong? Report it to tom.pickup@lancashire.gov.uk. Reports are acknowledged within 48 hours and re-checked at the primary source; where a figure is wrong it is corrected within five working days and logged. See the corrections policy and the route for named individuals to object.

Sources and licences

  • Company facts: Companies House.
  • Insolvency and strike-off notices: The Gazette, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
  • Food hygiene ratings: Food Standards Agency, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
  • Business counts, pay and demography: ONS and NOMIS, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
  • Innovation funding: Innovate UK / UKRI, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
  • Postcode geography: contains OS data (Crown copyright), Royal Mail data and ONS data, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Published by Tom Pickup in a personal capacity. Not published by or on behalf of any political party or by Lancashire County Council. Inclusion here is not a suggestion of wrongdoing by any person or company.