Quality assuring the UK business register

Andrew Allen

Quality framework

• Relevance • Coherence • Timeliness/ punctuality • Accuracy• Comparability• Accessibility & Clarity

Aspects of UK register quality

• Relevance – Business register coverage• Coherence - Administrative data input/

Profiling• Timeliness/ punctuality - Updating frequency• Accuracy – Register maintenance survey• Comparability – Quality control• Accessibility & Clarity - NSBRG/ Web site

Coverage

• Vital that register coverage is very high

• UK register based primarily on sales tax (VAT) and employers tax (PAYE) – relatively high thresholds

• Explored other sources to assess coverage

• Are other sources worth developing?

Other sources –Corporation Tax

• Legal Barriers

• Aggregate comparisons annually – give assurance of coverage

• Identified small company gap

• Would be beneficial – identifying small trading companies below VAT and PAYE threshold

• Possible access through new legislation

Sources – business directories

• Commercial databases – e.g. Yell

• Thought to reach small businesses below threshold

• Mostly consumer facing businesses - bias

• Good for phone numbers

• Expensive and commercial sensitivities

Sources – Valuation Office

• For rateable value of businesses -site based

• Potential source of local units

• Occupier names missing/ empty properties

• Can indicate missing local units

• Worth revisiting

Sources – Company registrations

• Used as a third source already

• Some registrations not on the register

• Examined a sample of the missing and their accounts to see why

• Many are not trading or for leaseholders.

• Challenge is to identify those trading

Coverage summary

• Current coverage meets existing needs

• None of the new sources would provide complete coverage

• Pursuing Corporation Tax in conjunction with further use of Companies registrations offers most cost-effective way to improve coverage

Universe coherence

• Different data sources lead to conflicts

• Administrative data held outside survey scope until quality assured – avoids duplication and sectoral bias

Examples:• Discrepancies between sources e.g. high PAYE

employment – low VAT turnover• Company registration – but no tax registration• Integration of farms register

Timeliness

• Lags in administrative processes impact on quality

• Example: UK VAT data daily, but 6 - 9 months lag in VAT process

• Administrative death process• Monitor changes in lags over time

Quality assuring input data

• 2.1 million active enterprises

• Team of 10 check administrative data inputs

• 21 daily VAT reports plus less frequent checks

• 40 checks applied to PAYE data quarterly

• Examples – large growth, large births, death check against other sources, size across sources

Impact of new tools on quality

• New tools can lead to discontinuities

• Improved matching software IDS

• Better match rates–meant units previously held outside universe as suspicious moved into scope of survey

• Introduced in controlled way in agreement with survey users

Register maintenance surveys

• Principally for keeping local unit structures up to date

• Around 75,000 businesses per year sampled• Complex businesses sampled each year • Simple businesses less frequently• Sample of businesses with PAYE and

register employment failing a closeness rule

Redeveloping the register survey

• Merged with an annual employment survey

• Will yield saving and improve coherence

• Business register and employment survey

New sample design

• Complex* 20+ FTE 1in1* active in more than one region and industry

• Simple 100+ FTE 1in1• Unusual cases (employment) 1in1• Simple 20 - 99 stratified by NACE 1 in 2• Simple < 20 FTE stratified by NACE 1 in 500• Administrative data used for most enterprises

<20 FTE

Profiling

• Team of 8 • Profile 500 large complex businesses each

year

• To improve coherence between ONS surveys• To reflect current operating and legal

structures• To improve response to ONS surveys.

Monthly quality control

• Alerts users to change over timeChange to top level universe

Change to employment, turnover and number of businesses

Drills down into industry, region, legal status, administrative sources

• % change by size, used to assess impact – traffic light system

Annual quality reports

• Small change each month – can show trends

• Timed to check quality before main annual survey samples taken

• Also used to quality assure the business register survey – 0.5 million LU’s updated each.

Special industry checks

• Monitoring of industries with known special criteria e.g. large employment required, only a small number in the country, discrepancies between employment/turnover

Examples:• Glass and steel manufacturing• Holding companies • Investment companies

Accessibility

• Feedback on register quality

Web publications

National Statistics Business Register Committee – key government users across UK

Annual survey of users

Summary - UK register quality

• Part of continuous improvement• Paying attention to administrative data• Extending business register outputs• More efficient surveys• Communicating with customers