FOI reference: FOI-2025-2823
You asked
I am writing to request data under the Freedom of Information Act regarding public houses (Pubs) and bars in the United Kingdom (Standard Industrial Classification code: 56302).
Specifically, I would like to request the following information, broken down by county or local authority, for each calendar year from 2010 to 2024 (and 2025 if available):
- The number of currently active public houses and bars in each year
- The number of new pub openings (business births)
- The number of pub closures (business deaths)
This data will be used for a personal, non-commercial data analysis project focused on understanding regional trends in pub closures across the UK.
If the data is only available at local authority level instead of county level, that will still be very useful.
I would appreciate it if the data could be provided in a spreadsheet format (e.g., CSV or Excel) and sent to me via email.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request enquiring the number of public houses and bars openings and closures from 2010 to 2024.
The information you have requested is available to order a bespoke analysis from our Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) data service team. Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact IDBRDAS@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there will be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
As the requested information is reasonably accessible via another route, even if only on payment, Section 21(2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).