Research reveals 4,498 businesses in Northern Ireland dissolved in 2022

Northern Ireland has the most resilient business population in the UK, according to recent research by NerdWallet.

Having analysed recent Companies House data, a total of 4,498 (6.1%) Northern Ireland business registered with Companies House on 1 January 2022 closed last year due to various challenges and struggles associated with the cost of living.

However NerdWallet found that a staggering 534,777 UK companies ceased trading in 2022 – the second highest in a decade (601,773 that dissolved in 2021).

The research also revealed Northern Ireland saw the average business age being just short of six years. While Belfast experienced the highest number of business closures in the region, with the city accounting for 1,339 of Northern Irish businesses that dissolved in 2022.

However despite the figures being in their thousands, Northern Ireland potentially emerged with the most resilient business population in the UK.

In comparison, London saw the largest number of companies cease trading in 2022. A staggering 174,910 companies based in the UK capital shuttered last year, or 12.2% of the capital’s business population.

Meanwhile, Wales lost a slightly higher percentage of its businesses registered with Companies House. With 18,236 companies dissolved, Wales shed 12.5% – an eighth of its business population in 2022. Scotland fared better in percentage terms, losing 9.2%, or 25,459, of its businesses.

This discrepancy between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK is even more evident when the numbers are broken down by local authority. In fact, four of the five least affected areas in the UK were in Northern Ireland.

Ranked by the percentage of active companies dissolved in 2022, only the Shetland Islands in Scotland had fewer dissolutions than Fermanagh and Omagh, Mid Ulster, Causeway Coast and Glens, and Derry City and Strabane in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland may have outperformed the rest of the UK due to the fact that, under the Northern Ireland Protocol, it has effectively remained part of the European Union single market for goods. However that could change in 2023, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) look set to bring the Protocol more in line with UK customs laws.