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.

The lists of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Elmbridge Borough Council, Mole Valley District Council and Surrey Heath Borough Council contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The Gazette

The Gazette is the UK’s official public record, and every winding-up petition, liquidation, administration and receivership is published in it, often weeks before Companies House shows the change. We read its corporate insolvency notices every day, and a company with such a notice in the last 90 days is held back, matched by its company number. A petition that the court dismisses no longer counts. We keep only the notice, its kind, the company number and its date, never the names a notice carries. The Gazette’s notices contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Energy performance certificates

Every office that is sold or let needs an energy performance certificate, rating it from A to G. Since April 2023 a landlord can’t continue to let an office rated F or G unless it is improved or an exemption is registered, so a low rating is a reason to call. We match each office to its certificate from the government’s energy performance data service only where the postcode, the house and unit numbers and the address all agree. A certificate lasts ten years: an older one is marked as expired, since a new one is needed before the office can be let. We keep the rating, the date and the certificate’s number, never its address: a certificate’s address is used only to find it, as Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail’s notice allows. The certificate data contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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. It needs a paid licence, which we plan to take out, and we 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. From a company’s latest accounts filed online we read how many people it employs, this year and last: the whole company’s figure, which helps a call and doesn’t change the score. 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 week.

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, 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.

Council boundaries

The maps on our home and coverage pages draw council areas from the Office for National Statistics’ local authority district boundaries, simplified for the screen. Source: Office for National Statistics, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2013.

Pictures on this site

The pictures of office buildings, an empty office floor and a floor plan at the top of our pages, on the sign-in page and in our link previews are illustrations made with AI. They show no real building, project, firm or person. The photographs of finished fit-outs beside our account of FSL Group are FSL’s own, of its work, used with its agreement.

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.