Two official UK statistics can describe business creation in the same quarter and still produce dramatically different numbers. In April to June 2026, Companies House recorded 192,287 company incorporations. ONS, in its quarterly business-demography release, recorded 79,325 business creations. The gap is not evidence that one source is wrong. It exists because the two systems measure different events, use different populations and serve different purposes. For professional advisers, understanding that distinction is more useful than trying to force the figures into one artificial total.
Companies House measures legal incorporation
Companies House maintains the statutory register of companies. Its incorporation count records new companies created as legal entities. The event is legal and administrative: a company comes into existence on the register. It can then begin trading, remain dormant, register for taxes later, employ people later or never develop into an economically significant business.
That makes the Companies House figure highly useful for questions about legal formation. Solicitors, accountants and compliance advisers can use it to understand the scale at which new corporate entities are being created. A newly incorporated company may need guidance on directors’ duties, share structures, shareholder agreements, contracts, registered-office obligations or record-keeping even before it becomes a large trading operation.
The strength of the source is precision around the legal event. The weakness is that legal existence is not the same thing as economic activity. An incorporation count cannot tell a reader how many of those companies have customers, employees, VAT registrations or meaningful turnover.
That is why saying “192,287 new trading businesses were created” would overstate what the Companies House number actually shows.
ONS measures entry into a business-demography system
ONS quarterly business demography uses the Inter-Departmental Business Register, or IDBR. Businesses generally enter that system through administrative evidence such as VAT or PAYE records. The measure is therefore closer to an economically active enterprise population than the statutory company register.
ONS recorded 79,325 business creations in Q2 2026, up 2.2% from the same quarter a year earlier. It also recorded 76,840 business closures. These figures are useful for analysing business population dynamics, but they should not be relabelled as Companies House incorporations.
Not every company needs to appear immediately in VAT or PAYE data. A small company may incorporate first and only later reach a point where it registers for VAT or employs staff. Some may remain below registration thresholds, have no employees, or operate in a way that delays entry into the administrative sources used by ONS.
The advantage of the ONS measure is that it is more closely tied to observable business activity. The limitation is that the timing of entry into the IDBR can differ from the legal incorporation date. It is therefore not a same-day mirror of Companies House.
Why dividing the two numbers creates a false answer
The most tempting mistake is to divide 79,325 by 192,287 and call the result the proportion of incorporated companies that became “real businesses”. That calculation produces a percentage, but the percentage would not have a defensible meaning.
The numerator and denominator do not describe the same population at the same stage. A company incorporated near the end of June may not appear in VAT or PAYE records until a later period. Some businesses on the IDBR are not newly incorporated companies in the same quarter. Some incorporated companies may never need the registrations that bring them into the ONS measure. Timing, coverage and legal form all differ.
The same problem appears with closures. Companies House recorded 156,515 companies struck off during Q2 2026, while ONS recorded 76,840 business closures. A strike-off is a legal-register event; an ONS closure reflects the business-demography definition. The figures should not be divided or compared as if they were alternative estimates of one identical event.
For advisers and analysts, this is a broader lesson in statistical literacy. A precise calculation is only useful when the underlying categories are compatible. A spreadsheet can divide almost anything by almost anything. The difficult part is deciding whether the result means anything.
Which measure should a professional-services firm use?
The answer depends on the question. If a law firm wants to understand the volume of new corporate entities entering the legal system, Companies House is the more direct source. If a consultancy wants to examine business creation and closure within an economically active business population, ONS business demography may be the better fit.
For client-development planning, the two measures can support different stages of the business lifecycle. Incorporation can signal early legal needs: ownership, governance, director responsibilities, terms and basic compliance. Later signs of economic activity can indicate a business moving into employment, VAT, trading contracts and operational complexity.
There are benefits to looking at both sources when comparison is the actual subject. Companies House provides fast, legally grounded formation data. ONS provides a broader economic-business framework. The drawback is that a reader must keep the definitions separate. Combining them into one blended “new business” number would create false precision rather than extra insight.
This is particularly important for professional-services marketing. A claim that “nearly 200,000 new businesses need advisers this quarter” would be too strong. A more defensible statement is that nearly 200,000 companies were incorporated, creating a large flow of new legal entities, while ONS separately recorded about 79,000 business creations under its own administrative definition.
The better way to report apparently conflicting statistics
When two official numbers differ, the first task is not to choose a winner. It is to identify the unit being counted, the period, the population, the trigger for inclusion and the purpose of the dataset. Once those are clear, much of the apparent contradiction disappears.
For Q2 2026, the responsible summary is simple. Companies House recorded 192,287 legal company incorporations. ONS recorded 79,325 business creations on the IDBR. Both are useful. Neither should be renamed to match the other.
The benefit of this approach is accuracy. Readers understand what each number can support, and advisers avoid building market claims on a denominator that does not fit the question. The downside is that the answer is less tidy than one headline figure. But statistical neatness is not the same as statistical truth.
Professional-services firms often work in areas where definitions matter: legal status, regulatory scope, contractual wording and compliance thresholds. Business statistics deserve the same discipline. Keeping Companies House and ONS measures separate is not pedantry. It is what prevents a persuasive-looking chart from telling the wrong story.
Sources: Companies House Q2 2026; ONS Business Demography Quarterly.