Two men having a meeting

Business start ups

The data is taken from the Business Demography dataset from ONS which gives, numbers of ‘births’, ‘deaths’ and survivals of businesses in the UK, figures are available down to local authority level. The data is published annually in November.

March 2021 performance

The latest Business Demography data was released in November 2020 and relates to trends up to 2019.  2020 data will be released by ONS in November 2021.
The business start-up rate is the number of new business registrations as a proportion of the total number of active enterprises.  In 2019 the start up rate in West Sussex was 10.4%, lower than the national (13.2%) and regional (11.9%) average.  Crawley had the highest start up rate at 13.2% and Chichester the lowest at 9.3%.
Over the last 5 years, generally the start-up rate has fallen in line with the national and regional trends.  Compared to the 18 upper tier and unitary authorities in the South East Region West Sussex has one of the lowest start up rates in the region, and the county does not lie in the top quartile compared with its statistical neighbours.

Actions

The Economy Reset Plan 2020-2024, essentially an update of the Economic Growth Plan 2018-2023 which sets out the priorities for supporting the recovery of the West Sussex economy  was adopted in November 2020.   The Reset Plan has nine priority themes, setting out where the County Council is best placed to make a difference and includes focus on enabling business start-ups, business survival and business adaptation.  There has been progress on various initiatives for enterprises and businesses including:
  • Recover and Rise Programme with 500 + businesses
  • Mobilising new programmes for low carbon and boosting innovation
  • Supporting The Track to be ready for launch when the time is right
  • Progressing Horsham Enterprise Park
Work is continuing with District and Borough Councils on refreshing and maintaining the Growth Deals and progress made on the delivery of key schemes in deals for next financial year which include:
  • Eastern Gateway
  • Manor royal Highways improvements
  • Portland Road Worthing
  • Place and Connectivity Burgess Hill