Methodology note: Companies register activities April 2023 to March 2024
Updated 28 November 2024
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Companies House is committed to continuous improvement. As a result, we have identified and addressed inconsistencies in the classification of industry codes.
Through our rigorous review process, we discovered that some low-level industry codes were being incorrectly aggregated under top-level sections. This adjustment ensures greater accuracy, reliability and comparability across government departments in our data reporting.
Where a previous section is missing the label, there were inconsistencies with where these codes were being placed. This new method brings consistency within the table.
This table explains the differences between the previous section and the new section that the codes are included in.
| Low-level industry code | Description | Previous Section | New Section |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2940 | Manufacture of machine tools | - | C |
| 4010 | Production | - | D |
| 2040 | Manufacture of gas; mains distributions | - | D |
| 5164 | Wholesale office machinery and equipment | - | G |
| 5165 | Wholesale machines | - | G |
| 5170 | Other wholesale | - | G |
| 5511 | Hotels & motels | - | I |
| 7220 | Software consultancy and supply | - | M |
| 7483 | Secretarial and translation | - | N |
| 7484 | Other business activities | - | N |
| 7499 | Non-trading company non-trading | N | X |
| 8622 | Unit and investment trusts | - | K |
| 9000 | Refuse disposal | - | E |
| 9800 | Residents property management | T | L |
| 9999 | Dormant company | T | X |
| 74990 | Non-trading company non-trading | M | X |
| 98000 | Residents property management | T | L |
| 99999 | Dormant company | U | X |
We have created a new section (X code not elsewhere classified) to address the specific industry codes that are related to Companies House. These are ‘Dormant Company’ and ‘Non-trading company non-trading’ which have historically artificially inflated the values of the sections these were included in.
By creating this new section code ‘X’, we are now able to compare the values of these sections produced by other government departments through their statistical outputs.