Hundreds of Ashfield businesses closed last year

Business leadership group the Institute of Directors said, while businesses open and close all the time, the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic “complicated” the business landscape across the country.

Office for National Statistics figures show 325 business closed in 2021 – up from 295 in 2020, but down from 375 in 2019, before the pandemic hit.

Nationally, 327,000 businesses closed in 2021, a 9 per cent increase on the year before and the highest number since 2017.

Kitty Ussher, IoD chief economist, said businesses are constantly opening and closing, particularly sole traders undertaking casual work – including delivery couriers, which saw a boom during the pandemic – and self-employed people conducting freelance work.

She said: "The picture is then complicated by the impact of the pandemic, which not only led to a temporary increase in unemployment and so increased the number of people looking for freelance work, but also caused a change in consumer spending patterns that affected different parts of the economy in different ways.

“All of this led to particularly high churn rates as the economy adjusted in 2021.”

Ms Ussher highlighted the rise in business births in 2021, suggesting this shows the economy is beginning to recover from the pandemic.

Across the country, 360,000 businesses began trading last year, a 9 per cent increase on the 333,000 the year before and the highest since 2016.

Of these, 385 were in Ashfield, meaning a total of 3,360 businesses were active in the area in 2021 – up from 3,295 the year before.

The IoD said the majority of new and closed businesses were sole traders – of the 327,000 total business deaths in the UK last year, just 82,000 had two or more employees.

Meanwhile, in Ashfield, there were about 20 high-growth businesses in the area – meaning the annualised growth in the number of employees of the business over the last three years is at least 20 per cent – and about 400 enterprises employed 10 or more staff.