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Businesses
County Durham’s economy is well positioned to grow. Our workforce and the numbers of people in work are growing, education levels are rising, and productivity levels are improving.
Key to this growth continuing is the creation (birth) of new businesses in the county along with their continued growth and the growth of our established businesses. Increasing the number of businesses in the county was of the key measures of success agreed by the County Durham Economic Partnership (CDEP) in 2010:
Measure: The number of businesses in the County to increase by 4,300 by 2030 contributing towards the rise in the employment rate.
Current: Number of businesses fell by 105 (0.7%) between 2023 and 2024 and currently stands at 14,475. This is still up 3,030 since 2010.
The following dashboard summarises the latest release of this data.
Key Messages
- In 2024 there were an estimated 14,475 business enterprises in County Durham, a fall from the previous year of 105,
- Since 2010 the number of business enterprises in the county has increased by 3,030, an increase of 26.5%. This increase is lower than that seen in the North East and England (29.2%and 31.7% respectively),
- The Construction also sector had the largest number of businesses with 2,360 in 2024, representing 16.3% of all businesses in the County,
- The number of business surviving into their third year is 60% of businesses ’born’ in 2019 and surviving into their third year compared to a high of 61.6% of businesses born in 2014 surviving into their third year. However, the number of businesses ‘born’ in 2017 and surviving into their 5th year is only 42.2%.
Industrial Specialisation (2021)
An index of Specialisation is a calculation which looks at the relative importance of a sector based on the number of jobs in one area as compared to those in another geographic area. For this analysis County Durham is compared to the rest of England. Any score over 1 (the red line in the charts below) indicates that County Durham is more specialised in terms of jobs than the rest of England; a score less than one indicates the opposite.
This is based on the Business and Enterprise Framework Groups mapped from the SIC2007 industrial groups and the data used is from 2021 to match the GVA data release.
By combining GVA and the number of jobs in a particular industry at the county and national level a picture of how the county’s economy has changed between 2009 and 2021 can be developed and compared to the national picture, in this case England. These elements can then be combined into the charts seen below.
Analysis on industrial specialisation is available in the Gross Value Added dashboard.
Links to Data:
- Business Enterprise Framework (BEF)
- ONS Business – Activity, Size and Location
- ONS Business Demography
- LG Inform: Active Businesses
The documents we publish on this page are either legally required to be made available for inspection, for information and analysis purposes or may have been supplied by the public and so in some cases may not be fully accessible. If, for any reason, you cannot access the documents and need an alternative format, please email ina@durham.gov.uk.