Business Structure Database (BSD) is the central dataset to which the others are linked, due to the fact that it covers virtually all business organisations in the UK.

The annual BSD dataset is a snapshot of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), which is a live register of data collected by HM Revenue and Customs via VAT and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. The BSD data are divided into ‘enterprises’ and ‘local units’. An enterprise is the overall business organisation. A local unit is a ‘plant’, such as a factory, shop, branch, etc. The dataset includes variables on turnover, employment, sector, geography and age and is available from 1997 – 2013. Linking together the annual snapshots, we have created longitudinal datasets of the enterprise and local unit versions of the BSD, each of which has approximately 5 million records.