Gera Business Vitality Score — Methodology

What is the Gera Business Vitality Score?

The Gera Business Vitality Score (GBVS/100) is a proprietary composite index computed by Gera from official ONS Business Demography data. It ranks each UK local authority on a 0–100 scale, combining three signals that collectively describe how healthy the local business environment is: how long enterprises survive, how fast the business population is growing, and how dense the active enterprise base is.

The GBVS is not a prediction of future performance and is not investment or business advice. It is a transparent, reproducible index built entirely from publicly available government data.

Data source

Dataset

ONS Business Demography 2024

Publisher

Office for National Statistics

Published

20 November 2025

Licence

Open Government Licence v3.0 — free to use, reproduce, and distribute with attribution.

API key

None required. Bulk Excel download, no authentication.

Tables used

Table 1.1d (births 2024), Table 2.1d (deaths 2024), Table 3.1d (active 2024), Table 5.1a (5-year survival, 2019 cohort)

Coverage

354 UK local/unitary authorities (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)

Formula

Step-by-step computation

1. 1

   Download ONS Business Demography Excel workbook

   Fetch "businessdemographyexceltables2024.xlsx" from the ONS Business Demography reference table page. No API key required. Published 20 November 2025 under Open Government Licence v3.0.

2. 2

   Extract district-level signals from four sheets

   Read Table 1.1d (births 2024, col C), Table 2.1d (deaths 2024, col C), Table 3.1d (active 2024, col C), Table 5.1a (5-year survival %, col M). Filter to district/UA-level GSS codes only (E06–E09, W06, S12, N09). Exclude rows where active = 0.

3. 3

   Derive net birth rate

   net_birth_rate_pct = (births_2024 − deaths_2024) / active_2024 × 100. Positive = growing business base; negative = contracting.

4. 4

   Min-max normalise each component

   Apply min-max normalisation independently to each component across all 354 local authorities: norm(x) = (x − min) / (max − min) × 100. Bounds from the 2024 dataset: surv5yr [4.07%, 66.67%]; net_birth_rate [−5.457%, 5.195%]; active [170, 58,370].

5. 5

   Apply weighted formula

   GBVS = 0.5 × norm(surv5yr) + 0.3 × norm(net_birth_rate) + 0.2 × norm(active_density). Round to 1 decimal place. The 5-year survival weight is highest because it is the most structurally stable signal of local business environment quality.

Weight rationale

5-year survival (50%)

The most durable signal. Reflects the structural quality of the local business environment — access to customers, skilled labour, supply chains, and support services. Resistant to short-term economic volatility. Source: ONS Table 5.1a.

Net birth rate (30%)

Measures current entrepreneurial momentum: how fast is the business population growing relative to its existing base? High net birth rates signal that more entrepreneurs are choosing the area and that conditions favour new business formation. Source: ONS Tables 1.1d and 2.1d.

Active enterprise density (20%)

Reflects agglomeration effects — a larger existing business base creates more inter-firm trade, a deeper labour pool, and better infrastructure. Normalised to avoid the metric simply reflecting population size. Source: ONS Table 3.1d.

Limitations and caveats

• ONS data is control-rounded to the nearest 5 to protect confidentiality — very small areas may have reduced precision.
• The 5-year survival figure uses the 2019 cohort (tracking to 2023). It reflects conditions 4–7 years ago, not the current environment.
• Active enterprise density is an absolute count, not population-adjusted. Larger authorities naturally score higher on this component before normalisation.
• The GBVS is an index of business environment conditions, not a forecast of future business performance or investment returns.
• Sector mix, local economic shocks (e.g. deindustrialisation), and national policy changes can influence scores independently of underlying business conditions.