Data sources and reuse

Council business rates lists

Councils publish lists of the businesses liable for rates on each property, either under the Open Government Licence or in response to Freedom of Information requests. They tell us who occupies an office, its rateable value, and the date the occupier became liable there. Councils republish their lists every few months, so a recent move can take a while to show. Each council sets its own reuse terms, and we ask for permission where a council requires it.

HM Land Registry registered leases

Leases granted for more than seven years must be registered. The Registered Leases dataset gives the date and term of each one, which lets us show a recorded expiry rather than an estimate. We are adding it now, and will show HM Land Registry’s attribution wherever its data is used.

Companies House

We match each occupier to its company on the Companies House register, by exact name only. The register tells us whether the company is still trading, what it does, who its current directors are, and recent changes such as a new registered office or a new director. A company that is dissolved, insolvent or being struck off is held back, and what a company does feeds the sector part of its score. We recheck each company every month.

Department for Education

For firms that want education work, we use the Department for Education’s register of schools (Get Information about Schools) and its Condition Improvement Fund outcomes. The register gives each school’s address, phone number, website and head teacher, and comparing weekly copies shows when a school has a new head. The fund outcomes list the schools awarded money for building work.

Companies House and Department for Education data contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Personal data in these sources

Business rates lists can include sole traders and individuals. We remove them, along with any entries a council has withheld as personal data, before a lead is scored. The only names we pass on are the ones public registers publish for business contact: company directors and head teachers. Anyone named can ask us to remove them. Our privacy notice has the detail.

Estimates, and reporting a mistake

Where a lease isn’t on the register, its dates are estimated from the date the occupier moved in and a typical lease length. Every estimate is labelled as one. If you spot something wrong, email [email protected] and we will correct it.