Hundreds of Falkirk area businesses closed last year, latest figures reveal

Business leadership group the Institute of Directors said that, 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 530 business closed in 2021 – up from 475 in 2020.

It was also up from 460 in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

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

Kitty Ussher, chief economist at the IoD, 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.

These are included in the official statistics and are more likely to be created or closed in a short period of time, Ms Ussher added.

Ms Ussher 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."

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

Of these, 450 were in Falkirk.

It meant a total of 3,995 businesses were active in the area in 2021 – down from 4,050 the year before.

In Falkirk, there were around 15 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% – and around 430 enterprises employed 10 or more staff.