Lord Mawson

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the Acting National Statistician of the UK Statistics Authority.

Emma Rourke | Acting National Statistician

The Lord Mawson OBE

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

2 June 2025

Dear Lord Mawson,

As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking how many small and medium-sized building companies have ceased trading in the financial years (1) 2024–25, (2) 2023–24, and (3) 2022–23; and what assessment has been made of the trend of these figures (HL7770).

Using the quarterly business demography release[1], we can show, in Table 1, the number of businesses which were classified to the construction industry which have ceased trading in the financial years listed. Figures for building companies are not separately available so the wider aggregation of the construction industry has been used. This consists of construction of buildings, civil engineering, and specialised construction activities. These figures are classified as ‘official statistics in development’.

Table 1: Number of businesses classified to the construction industry which have ceased trading in the financial years 2022/23 – 2024/25.

Source: Office for National Statistics

It is not possible to show these figures for small and medium sized enterprises only since this breakdown is not available from the quarterly release. However, figures from our 2024 UK Business: activity, size and location dataset[2] show that small and medium sized enterprises, taken to be businesses with employment less than 250, make up 99.9 per cent of businesses in the construction industry.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) makes no estimate of the trend of these figures.

Yours sincerely,

Emma Rourke

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/businessdemographyquarterlyexperimentalstatisticsuk/latest

[2]https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/ukbusinessactivitysizeandlocation/2024

The Government recognises and values the contributions hereditary peers have made to the House of Lords.

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill delivers the Government’s manifesto commitment to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, completing the work of the House of Lords Act 1999. In the 21st century there should not be places reserved in the legislature for people born into certain families.

The Government is supportive of the inclusion of individuals from all backgrounds in the House of Lords and believes the second chamber is enriched by members who bring diverse experience and expertise. This includes members with business experience.

Companies House sought invitations from service providers and conducted a robust assessment against critical success factors concerning user experience, value for money, affordability for users and viability of delivery.

GOV.UK One Login was selected because it satisfied these critical success factors and aligned with wider government priorities to utilise cross government verification solutions where possible to streamline access government services as set out below:

www.gov.uk/guidance/use-govuk-one-login

To ensure that all customers were able to access identity verification, a secondary route was put in place in the form of Authorised Company Service Providers (ACSPs).

The Post Office option is provided under the GOV.UK One Login Service. Companies House understands Government Digital Service undertook a robust analysis to ensure the option achieved the same identity verification standard as other identity verification journeys within the GOV.UK One Login service.

Companies House works closely with the GOV.UK One Login team to monitor success rates through this route, along with sharing customer feedback and insight where relevant to improve the service.

On 8 April 2025 Companies House started a lengthy period of voluntary Identity Verification to assess the effectiveness of the solution before making Identity Verification mandatory from 18 November.

As of 9 December, 1.8 million people have successfully completed verification via GOV.UK One Login. Between 8 April and 9 December, Companies House received 355 official complaints regarding GOV.UK One Login. From September to November 2025, the period for which data is available of the Government Digital Service (GDS) received 75 complaints from Companies House customers using One Login to verify their identities.

Construction is a cyclical industry, and the financial viability of firms can be affected by a range of factors, including the state of the market, commercial negotiations in relation to contracts, liabilities incurred, and the price of wages, products and materials. Small firms in the construction supply chain are also vulnerable to late or non-payment, which is why the Government has taken steps to improve payment reporting, and is committed to publishing a consultation on legislative measures to ensure prompt and fair payment.

Proportionate and balanced regulation of charities is key to helping the sector deliver the vital work that it does. The Charities Act 2022, which gained Royal Assent in February 2022, implemented Law Commission recommendations to reform a number of processes in charity law. No formal impact assessment has yet been undertaken into the level of regulatory burden on charities, but in line with Government practice DCMS intends to conduct a post-Implementation review of the Charities Act 2022 by February 2027.

The Charities Act 2022, which gained Royal Assent in February 2022, implemented Law Commission recommendations to reform a number of processes in charity law. These include how charities can change their governing documents, sell land, make better use of permanent endowment funds, and merge with other charities.

The Act should reduce unnecessary or burdensome regulation that increases the sector’s costs and discourages people from volunteering to become trustees, whilst preserving important safeguards. The Law Commission’s recommendations are estimated to deliver savings for charities of £28m over a ten year period.

DCMS officials continue to review the charities’ legislative framework to ensure that regulation is balanced and proportionate.

A post-implementation review will be conducted and published three to five years after Royal Assent, in line with usual Government practice. DCMS intends to conduct a post-Implementation review of the Charities Act 2022 by February 2027.

Proper safeguarding is a key governance priority for all charities and is core to the delivery of frontline services that charities provide. No formal impact assessment has been undertaken into the impacts of safeguarding regulation and guidance on charities.

The Charity Commission has published guidance for charities which helps charities understand their safeguarding responsibilities. The Government has also published an online safeguarding tool designed to help charities handle safeguarding allegations.

Local highway authorities have a duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 to maintain the highways network in their area. The Act does not set out specific standards of maintenance, as it is for each individual local highway authority to assess which parts of its network need repair and what standards should be applied, based upon their local knowledge and circumstances.

The Department does not hold data on the time taken by local highway authorities to repair reported potholes, but national guidance recommends that defects and potholes which require urgent attention should be made safe at the time of inspection or as soon as possible.

Local highway authorities have a wide range of tools and methods available to them to survey their networks and to monitor the condition of the roads they maintain over time. The Government does not prescribe which of these must be used to inform their asset management programme.

The Government recognises that historic underinvestment has meant that authorities have not necessarily had the resources to maintain roads in the way that they would want to. The Government has therefore announced a record £7.3 billion for the next four years. This is building on the c.£1.6 billion in capital funding for local highways maintenance in England for the financial year 2025/26, which includes £500 million of additional funding when compared to funding levels for 2024/25.

In 2025/26, 25% of the additional funding was designated as incentive funding and was contingent upon local highway authorities meeting certain reporting requirements. A portion of the £7.3 billion over the next four years will also be designated as incentive funding and will be subject to local highway authorities demonstrating that they comply with best practice in highways maintenance, for example by spending all the DfT’s capital grant on highways maintenance and adopting more preventative maintenance. Authorities that fail to meet these standards will have this incentive funding withheld.

In addition, on 11 January, DfT published a new traffic light rating system for all local highway authorities in England. Under this system, each authority is rated red, amber or green based on the condition of their roads, how effectively they spend their record Government funding, and whether they do so using best practice. Authorities that state their capital investment to maintain local highways is less than DfT’s capital grant for highways maintenance receive a red spend scorecard under this rating system.

DfT collects and collates a range of information about information about local roads from local authorities in England annually.

Official statistics on the condition of local roads in England are published annually on GOV.uk. These statistics have presented the percentage of road that should have been considered for maintenance (red), by road classification and local authority, since 2008. These statistics show that in England:

• The percentage of local ‘A’ road categorised as red has remained at 4% since 2020. Despite a slight increase from 3% in 2019, the proportion of ‘A’ road categorised as red is still below levels seen in 2008 to 2013.
• After reaching a peak in 2011 and 2012, where 10% of ‘B’ and ‘C’ road was categorised as red, the proportion fell to 6% in 2016 but has since increased to 7% in 2023 and 2024.
• The proportion of the unclassified road network categorised as red has fluctuated between 15% and 18% since current reporting started in 2008, and in 2024 stood at 17%, unchanged from 2023.

This financial year the Government has introduced transparency reporting for local highway authorities across England alongside making an additional £500 million available for highways maintenance. To qualify for their full share of this funding uplift, local highway authorities had to publish reports setting out how they comply with best practice, including in relation to the extent to which they prioritise preventative maintenance.

Further to this, on 11 January, the Department published a new rating system for every highway authority in England. Each local highway authority received a red, amber or green rating based on the condition of their roads, how much they are spending to maintain it, and whether they do so using best practice, including by adopting more preventative maintenance. The ratings, which will be updated periodically, provide an incentive for councils to adopt more preventative maintenance, and enable the Department to provide targeted support to authorities to help them adopt best practice.

To gain access to their full highways maintenance funding in the future, local highway authorities will have to continue to demonstrate that they comply with best practice, for example by adopting more preventative maintenance.

From 2025, all local highway authorities were required to publish transparency reports on their websites to increase transparency and ensure that both Government and local residents can see how record investment into local roads is being spent. Using the data from these transparency reports, the Department published a new traffic light rating system for all local highway authorities in England on 11 January. Under this system, each authority is rated red, amber or green based on the condition of their roads, how effectively they spend their record Government funding, and whether they do so using best practice. This system provides public accountability and reinforces the expectation that funding is used for its intended purpose.

Under this system, 10 local highway authorities scored a red on their spend scorecard, which means they have stated in their highways maintenance transparency reports that in the current financial year they are due to invest less capital to maintain their local highways than their DfT capital grant for local highways maintenance. A large portion of local highway authorities did, however, spend more than their allocation with 113 local highway authorities receiving a green rating for this scorecard.

The Department’s officials meet regularly with local authority representatives and other experts in the road maintenance industry to discuss best practice. Ministers have also met with key stakeholder groups, including the Pothole Partnership which comprises organisations representing road users and industry.

The Department agrees that local highway authorities should focus on preventative rather than reactive maintenance activities, and this advice is set out in the Code of Practice on Well Managed Highway Infrastructure, which is available online. The Department is committed to updating this guidance and has begun work to scope out urgently which parts need updating and how. The Department strongly advocates a risk-based whole lifecycle asset management approach to local authority highways maintenance programmes, and encourages authorities to consider all parts of the highway network, such as bridges, cycleways, and lighting columns, and not just the fixing of potholes or resurfacing of roads.

Decisions on how much to spend on their local highway networks each year are matters for local highway authorities, who have a duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 to maintain the public highway network in their area. The Department for Transport collects and publishes on gov.uk each year data on authorities’ capital and revenue expenditure on their highway maintenance activities. The data shows that, at a national level, total spending on local road maintenance in the financial year 2022/23 was broadly similar to total spend in each of the previous five years.

This Government recognises the importance of well-maintained roads and has provided an additional £500m for highway maintenance for the year 2025/26 – a near 50% uplift on the current baseline. This has resulted in an 36% increase on average to individual local highway authority allocations, as well as providing highway maintenance funding top-ups to London authorities and mayoral areas already receiving City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements. These allocations can be found on gov.uk.

In addition, the Department is taking a number of steps to improve its understanding of the condition of local roads. It worked with the British Standards Institute and the highway sector to develop a new road condition data standard for local highway authorities, which was published last year. This will enable them to utilise new technologies, including AI, to identify potholes and other defects in their highway network more promptly.

The Government is considering its response to the 2022 consultation and will make an announcement in due course.

The exact amount of statutory and mandatory training completed varies, depending on which organisation they work for, their role or roles, and the frequency of their movement between organisations, for instance resident doctors rotating between organisations may have to repeat some of the training.

On average, it is estimated that nationally defined statutory and mandatory training takes up to eight hours or one day per person per year and locally mandated training will add to this. This considerable investment of time has to be balanced against the fact that this training is both important, for instance safety training and emergency preparedness training, and often required by law.

In early 2024, NHS England commenced work in partnership with the Department, the Care Quality Commission, the Health Services Safety Investigations Branch, and NHS Resolution to reform statutory and mandatory training through a programme to optimise, rationalise, and redesign.

The following table shows the total number of prescription items, quantities and Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) of spacer/holding chamber devices that were dispensed in England regardless of where prescribed from January 2019 to November 2024:

Source: NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA)

Notes:

1. Data was based on the information within the Prescription Cost Analysis published statistics, using Part IXA of the Drug Tariff for Spacer/Holding Chamber device as the basis to provide a list of spacer products held in the NHSBSA drn+d database
2. Items have been dispensed, but not necessarily prescribed, in England.

Information on how to look after a spacer device is included in the patient information leaflet that is provided to patients with their device. This can be found in the section on how to look after the device and includes cleaning and storage instructions as well as advice on when the device should be replaced. The general advice for the spacers available in the United Kingdom is that they should be replaced after one year.

Guidance for patients on device replacement can also be found on patient support websites such as Asthma and Lung UK which includes similar advice: ‘You should replace your spacer at least every year, especially if you use it daily, but some may need to be replaced sooner – ask your GP, nurse or pharmacist if you’re unsure.’

Guidance for healthcare professionals can be found on the Right Breath website and on the NHS clinical guidance page which recommend that all spacers should be replaced annually while the British National Formulary which provides healthcare professionals with up-to-date information about the use of medicines recommends that spacer devices should be replaced every six to 12 months.

NHS England is not aware of any additional clinical guidance it has issued, other than that contained in the product information, about replacing spacers.

Unintended consequences, such as potential side effects, associated with taking antidepressants are outlined in the Product Information provided with each pack of medicine. The safety of all medicines is kept under continuous review by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and the product information is updated as needed to reflect what is known about the medicine. The product information is designed to support but not replace the clinical conversation between the prescriber and patient on the benefits and risks of pharmacological treatment.

The Medicines Used in Mental Health statistical release includes information about prescribing in England for medicines classified within the British National Formulary section 0403, as antidepressant drugs. There were 6,873,381 total identified patients, aged 18 years old and over, in quarter two of 2024/25.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) publishes population statistics for England on the ONS website. The estimated mid-year population for people aged 18 years old and over in England in 2023 was 45,691,677.

Based on the latest published data, the number of adults, those aged 18 years old and over, in England who received a prescription for antidepressant drugs in the quarterly period of July to September 2024 was 15% of the estimated 2023 mid-year population.

A number of anti-depressant products have been licenced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). These medicines are prescription only, and must only be prescribed by a healthcare professional.

Each individual product is assessed for its efficacy and safety in a specific indication prior to the issuing of a marketing authorisation. Only when the benefit-risk analyses have been shown to be positive in relation to quality, safety, and efficacy, will a product obtain an approval.

The Product Information for each product will include not only the details of the indication, but will also include posology, or the dose recommendations, contra-indications, a list of known side-effects, and a reference to the Yellow Card Scheme, for reporting new side-effects. Safety is regularly monitored in order to detect any safety signal not recorded during the clinical trials and once the drug is available to a wider population.

Details of products approved by the MHRA, including therapeutic indications, can be found by searching ‘antidepressant’ on the MHRA website, which is available in an online only format.

The effectiveness of the product, which is measured post-authorisation, is considered by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and other learned bodies, for the development of clinical guidance.

It should be noted that non-pharmacological alternatives may also be recommended to a patient, however this a decision for the healthcare professional.

The NICE is the independent body responsible for translating evidence into authoritative guidance and best practice for the health and care system. NICE guidelines provide recommendations in terms of both the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions and services, and National Health Service organisations are expected to take them fully into account in designing services that meet the needs of their local populations.

The NICE has published guidance on the treatment and management of depression in adults which provides recommendations on the use of antidepressants and non-drug treatments for depression.

The government recognises the critical role the motor finance market plays in allowing people to own their own vehicle. The government is engaging with a broad range of stakeholders to monitor issues in the motor finance market.