National Survey of Registered Businesses (NSRB) review

Question 1

1. General information

Accepted Answer

1.1 Purpose of this consultation

The Department of Business and Trade (DBT) is seeking views from key stakeholders and users on the proposed changes to the DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses (NSRB) Official Statistics publication. The department is also interested in learning more about those who use the statistics. This consultation is open to all.

Issued:

14 November 2025

Respond by:

Responses to the survey consultation are requested by 5 December 2025

Enquiries to:

Central Impact and Appraisal Team, Central Analysis

Department of Business and Trade

Old Admiralty Building

London, SW1A 2EG

Email: NSRB.Consultation@businessandtrade.gov.uk

1.2 Territorial extent

This consultation relates to the DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses that is conducted in the UK.

1.3 How to respond

We encourage respondents to make use of the online e-consultation platform wherever possible as this is the government’s preferred method of receiving responses. This can be found at NSRB Consultation Survey.

If you are unable to respond in this way, please email your responses to the address listed. When sending your comments please use the response template (see section 5.0) and include contact details (your name and either email address, postal address or telephone number) so that we can follow up if clarification is needed.

1.4 Additional copies

You may make copies of this document without seeking permission. However, you are not permitted to make any amendments or alterations to the document.

1.5 Confidentiality and data protection

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with the access to information legislation, primarily the:

Freedom of Information Act 2000
Data Protection Act 1998
Environmental Information Regulations 2004

If you want information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please say so clearly when you send your response to the consultation. It would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded by us as a confidentiality request.

We will summarise all responses and place this summary on the GOV.UK website. This summary will include a list of names or organisations that responded but not people’s personal names, addresses or other contact details.

1.6 Quality assurance

This consultation has been carried out in accordance with the government’s Consultation Principles.

If you have any complaints about the consultation process (as opposed to comments about the issues which are the subject of the consultation) address them to:

Email: statistics@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Question 2

2. Introduction

Accepted Answer

2.1 Background of NSRB

The National Survey of Registered Businesses (NSRB) is an official statistic commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) monitoring exporting behaviours, plans, capabilities, and attitudes of businesses across the UK. In addition to supporting monitoring and evaluation across the department, it is also used to assess the performance and impact of DBT’s communication campaigns.

In total, 9 annual waves of the NSRB have been completed following its commencement in 2015. The survey was originally commissioned by the Department for International Trade (DIT) in 2015. This was commissioned for a number of reasoning including:

as a product to evaluate the success of the Exporting is GREAT campaign
as a vehicle to determine and understand barriers to exporting, current uses of support services and attitudes to trade across UK businesses

Evaluated campaigns have changed as DIT (and then DBT) campaigns have evolved from Exporting is GREAT to Made in the UK and the UK Export Academy. In addition, questions focused on business attitudes have evolved slightly across waves but have remained thematically consistent.

Waves 1 and 2 were published in a combined report in 2017 and subsequent reports covered one wave. Since wave 6, the survey data has been published bi-annually as mid-year data tables (data from quarters 1 and 2 of fieldwork) in the winter following fieldwork and as full-year data tables (data from all 4 fieldwork quarters) in the summer following fieldwork. The full-year data tables are accompanied by a full written report outlining trends in the data and comparing responses to previous years, a technical report and an html executive summary.

The primary focus of the NSRB is on businesses with an annual turnover of £500,000 or more. This is on the basis that these larger businesses can potentially generate high value exports at larger scale.

Fieldwork is carried out in 4 quarters, normally beginning in February or March and finishing in November or December. Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 are in the field for 6 to 8 weeks, while Quarter 3 and Quarter 4 are carried out together across an elongated fieldwork period lasting around 16 weeks.

A list of the questions can be found in the technical report, questions from the most recent wave (wave 9), published in 2025, can be found at DBT national survey of registered businesses’ exporting behaviours, attitudes and needs 2024.

The data is collected via a CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) of business decision makers for businesses at the enterprise level. The sample is currently 3,000 interviews per wave (annual year). Businesses are quota sampled to ensure a representative cross section of UK businesses (with those businesses reporting an annual turnover of £500,000 or more oversampled as described).

2.2 Reason for the consultation

The NSRB is a widely-used source of evidence to the department providing insights into business attitudes towards trade, exporting and use of departmental services. However, since the formation of DBT, the survey has not been adapted to the expanding priorities of the new department. The current NSRB focuses on segmenting businesses in relation to trade activity, exporting behaviours, perceived barriers, business capability, and evaluations of marketing campaigns. The topic areas, while critical to the department, are not representative of the full scope DBT’s strategic priority areas.

DBT has undertaken extensive internal stakeholder engagement in order to identify key evidence gaps and opportunities to streamline departmental surveys. This will combine a reduction in survey burden for businesses while still ensuring priority evidence needs are still met.

As well as reviewing the survey content (topic areas and questions), DBT will take this opportunity to consider the frequency and method of the survey, size of the sample and the outputs produced to ensure that they:

provide good quality evidence
remain insightful and engaging for users
deliver value for money

The changes under consideration are outlined in more detail in section 3.0.

To inform this review we would like to understand how the statistics are currently used by external users and their value to users, as well as the impact of any proposed changes. Therefore, respondents are asked to complete the consultation questions at the end of this document. This is in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

All responses will be considered in the context of the aims and objectives of the department, the financial budget, resource implications and methodological constraints.

Question 3

3. Changes under consideration

Accepted Answer

3.1 Updated content

Following an internal review, DBT is proposing to make changes to the content of the survey. These include the addition, removal and amendment of questions. Some of the areas we are considering including in the new survey are:

business confidence and willingness to invest in the UK (for example, ‘How confident is your business about the UK business environment as an enabler of investment over the next 12 months?’ or ‘How confident is your business about the overall UK economy growing in the next 12 months?’)
perceptions of DBT policy areas (for example, Industrial Strategy, Trade Strategy, Market Access, Digitalisation, Windsor Framework, Safety of UK products, Re-domiciliation)
awareness and impact of DBT support services (for example, Export Promotion, Business Growth Service)

We are keen to understand which questions within the NSRB are of most value to external users, whether additional questions in relation to the topic areas would be useful to users and whether we should be incorporating questions on additional topic areas. This will help to ensure that as we develop the new survey, there is minimal disruption and loss of critical data while also incorporating new questions that are important and relevant to external users of the publication.

The department is considering changing the name of the survey from the DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses to the DBT National Survey of Businesses (behaviours, attitudes and sentiment) to better reflect its broader coverage of business sentiment and perceptions.

3.2 Questions to be removed or amended

This section outlines the questions which have been identified as being the least useful to internal users. This has been determined following extensive internal stakeholder engagement across DBT. We are now inviting views from external users on the removal and amendment to these questions.

Advertising:

With the launch of the Business Growth Service (BGS), the advertising evaluation questions currently included in the NSRB will be moved to a different cross-governmental evaluation product. As these questions also require the respondent to access the internet to view a link, this section of the current NSRB has a lower response rate due to interviewees not wanting to participate. It also accounts for a large amount of time in the survey and will therefore reduce the length of the survey by approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Removing these questions will reduce the burden on respondents and streamline the delivery of the survey (by removing the requirement for the respondent to access the internet). The detail of these questions is shown in section 6.1.

Demographics:

The NSRB currently asks a sub-set of respondents for information on their gender and ethnicity. No stakeholders have been identified as using this data, but we are interested in understanding ways these questions could be amended or expanded to aid analysis in this area. The current questions are detailed in section 6.3.

Supply chains:

Of the 3 questions on Supply Chains, one version of one question (SCHAIN2B), exploring the resolution of supply chains experienced within the last few years (as opposed to currently experiencing which are asked in SCHAIN2A), was identified as unused and is therefore proposed for potential removal. The detail of all 3 questions is shown in Section 6.4 to demonstrate coverage of the theme, but only SCHAIN2B is considered for removal.

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs):

Of the 6 questions on FTAs, 2 questions (4 and 5) were highlighted as not frequently used and are therefore proposed for potential removal. The detail of all 6 questions is shown in Section 6.5 to demonstrate coverage of the theme, but only question 4 and 5 are considered for removal.

The removal of these questions is anticipated to reduce the overall survey duration by approximately 6 minutes.

DBT has undertaken an internal review to assess potential duplication across its survey portfolio, with a focus on identifying questions that are repeated unnecessarily or no longer meet a defined user need. To reduce respondent burden and improve the coherence of our evidence base, we are working to ensure that each question is placed within the most appropriate survey vehicle.

As part of this process, we have identified a number of questions currently included in the NSRB that also appear in other DBT surveys. We are therefore considering whether these questions should continue to be included in the NSRB.

DBT will continue to review the remaining questions to ensure they are fit for purpose and meet user needs. We also welcome feedback on the broader question set and response options within the existing publication, beyond those explicitly highlighted.

3.3 Frequency

DBT is exploring options to increase the frequency of the fieldwork for this survey to enable more timely tracking and broader coverage of priority topics. Fieldwork currently runs across 4 quarters in 3 batches (quarters 3 and 4 data are collected in one elongated fieldwork season). While some metrics may remain relatively stable year-on-year, running the survey at a quarterly frequency and reporting on this throughout the year would allow us to monitor more dynamic indicators and respond to emerging policy needs. This would be achieved through a modular design, combining a consistent set of core questions with the flexibility to introduce new content on a wave-by-wave basis. DBT are seeking views towards this design approach.

3.4 Sample size

DBT is exploring the feasibility to increase the sample size from around 3,000 businesses annually (full-wave data published in the summer) to around 4,000 to enable more sub-group analysis throughout the year. As mentioned, DBT are considering increasing the frequency of the survey to quarterly – without increasing the sample size, this would split the existing sample size to around 750 businesses per quarter, limiting the granularity of the analysis on a quarterly basis for example by sector (Standard Industry Classification or Industrial Strategy Sector). However, there are challenges with increasing sample size, such as saturation of the large business population. Therefore, we will continue to explore the feasibility of this approach. We welcome feedback from users on the implications of either increasing or maintaining the sample size.

3.5 Outputs

DBT currently publishes the following outputs from the NSRB:

html executive summary
summary report (pdf)
summary tables total businesses full wave (ods)
summary tables more than £500,000 annual turnover businesses full wave (ods)
summary tables total businesses mid wave (ods)
summary tables more than £500,000 annual turnover businesses mid wave (ods)
technical report (pdf)

These can be found at DBT national survey of registered businesses’ exporting behaviours, attitudes and needs.

DBT would welcome suggestions and recommendations on how to make the existing survey outputs more insightful, engaging and useful for both current and potential users. This includes feedback on the presentation of the data, as well as the supporting technical information about how the statistics are produced.

DBT welcomes insights on what form of outputs would be most useful for respondents including the use and value of the annual report. DBT are considering replacing the annual report with a more dynamic format such as an interactive dashboard or something similar. We are continuing to explore the feasibility of this with our digital teams. Alongside this, we are exploring a shift to either reporting ever 2 years or 3 years for more detailed analysis, with a summary of findings still being published regularly. This approach would allow us to focus in-depth reporting on time series trends while maintaining timely access to headline insights.

3.6 Data collection approach

The data in the NSRB is collected via a CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) of Business Decision Makers for businesses at the enterprise level. Throughout 2025, DBT has been carrying out a pilot study to explore the feasibility of implementing online collection methods through a follow-up online survey. This small-scale study achieved a response rate of 10% to 12%, suggesting that online methods could be a viable option for survey delivery. However, it should be noted that the sample pool only included respondents who had previously agreed to recontact through the main survey and therefore had a previously established response which may skew the sample.

DBT are exploring different approaches to data collection and welcome suggestions on this topic.

Question 4

4. After the consultation

Accepted Answer

We will review all of the consultation responses and use these to inform our final recommendations on any changes to the DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses. If we receive a large number of responses, we will consider the use of a Large Language Model (LLM) to support the analysis of responses. We will publish a summary of responses to the consultation, and our plans for the next steps in early 2026.

Question 5

5. Catalogue of consultation questions

Accepted Answer

Respondents should note that the deadline for responding to the questions is 9:30am on 5 December 2025.

5.1 Data protection and confidentiality

Are you happy to proceed with this survey on this basis?

a. Yes
b. No

5.2 NSRB usage

1․ Is it clear why the update to the NSRB is necessary and why this work is being undertaken?

a․ Yes
b․ No
c․ Don’t know

2․ How frequently do you currently utilise the statistics and findings from the General Exporting Behaviours section of the NSRB? (DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses (PDF version))

a․ Not at all
b․ Some publications but not every wave
c․ Every annual wave
d․ Every publication (bi-annually)

3․ How do you currently utilise the statistics and findings from the General Exporting Behaviours section of the NSRB? (DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses (PDF version))

a. Comment here

4․ How frequently do you currently utilise the statistics and findings from the Barriers to Exporting section of the NSRB? (DBT National Survey of Registered Businesses (PDF version))