Revision note (24 August 2026): This page previously reported figures based on a snapshot that only captured companies currently on the register, undercounting the true total by omitting every dissolved company from the sector's history. It has been rebuilt using a full pull of the Companies House Advanced Search API covering every SIC 96020 company incorporated since the register begins, active or not. Sections that can't be verified directly from Companies House data (business model split, company size by turnover, population-adjusted regional density) have been removed rather than estimated. They will be reinstated only once backed by a real, cited source.

Data Source:

Companies House Advanced Search API
Snapshot date: August 24, 2026

Classification: SIC Code 96020 (Hairdressing and other beauty treatment)

Total Companies: 158,433 limited companies (every status, full history)

Analysis Date: August 2026

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report analyses all 158,433 limited companies ever registered under SIC code 96020 (Hairdressing and other beauty treatment) in the UK, as recorded by Companies House as of August 24, 2026 — including companies since dissolved, not just those currently active.

Active Companies

49.2%

78,005 currently active

Of the full historical register

Liquidation Rate

0.6%

873 companies

Of full historical register

2024 Incorporations

15,614

New companies formed

Confirmed from incorporation date field

2025 Formations

15,847

Full calendar year

Highest on record

Self-Employment (Range)

17k–210k

Depending on definition

See Section 5 for full breakdown

Key Findings

Company Status (full historical register):

Active trading: 78,005 (49.2%)
Dissolved: 79,549 (50.2%)
Liquidation: 873 (0.6%)
Other (voluntary arrangement / converted-closed): 6 (<0.1%)

Business Formation:

2024: 15,614 new incorporations
2025: 15,847 new incorporations — highest full year on record
2026 (through 24 August): 9,818 so far

Regional Distribution:

London: 31,804 companies with "London" in the registered address (20.1% of total)
See Section 3 for full methodology and caveats on regional matching

1. SECTOR COMPOSITION

Total Companies by Status

Status	Count	Percentage	Notes
Active	78,005	49.2%	Currently trading, on register
Dissolved	79,549	50.2%	Removed from register
Liquidation	873	0.6%	In formal insolvency process
Other statuses	6	<0.1%	Voluntary arrangement, converted-closed
TOTAL	158,433	100%	Every SIC 96020 company on record, all time

Source: Companies House Advanced Search API, August 24, 2026

Why the active rate looks different from before: a snapshot that only includes currently-registered companies will always show an active rate close to 90%, because it has already excluded every company that dissolved and dropped off the register. That's not a measure of business survival — it's an artefact of what the snapshot can see. The 49.2% figure here reflects the true proportion of every company this sector has ever produced that is still trading today.

2. BUSINESS FORMATION TRENDS

Annual Incorporations

Year	New Incorporations	Notes
2016	4,849	Confirmed, full history
2017	6,682	Confirmed, full history
2018	8,846	Confirmed, full history
2019	10,638	Confirmed, full history
2020	13,614	COVID year — still a formation increase
2021	12,552	Confirmed, full history
2022	14,705	Confirmed, full history
2023	15,956	Confirmed, full history
2024	15,614	Confirmed, full history
2025	15,847	Highest full year on record
2026	9,818	Through 24 August — partial year

All figures are exact counts from the incorporation date field across the complete historical dataset — none are estimated or projected.

Formation Trends

2016–2018 vs 2023–2025:

2016–2018 total: 20,377 incorporations
2023–2025 total: 47,417 incorporations
Growth: 133% — a genuine, sustained increase, consistent with post-pandemic growth in self-employed and salon-based beauty work

3. REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION

Methodology note: the figures below count companies whose registered office address contains the named city as a whole word. This is a direct, reproducible text match against real registered addresses — but it is not a formal Local Authority District boundary match (a company registered on a "Manchester Road" in a different town would be counted, for example), and it will slightly overcount denser city names. Population-adjusted density has been removed from this section until we have a verified postcode-to-region mapping — the population figures used in the previous version of this page could not be traced to a real source and have been dropped rather than reused.

Companies by Named City (registered address text match)

City	Total Companies	Active	Active %	Dissolved	Liquidation
London	31,804	14,426	45.4%	17,265	111
Manchester	4,355	1,927	44.2%	2,375	53
Birmingham	3,635	1,601	44.0%	2,005	29
Glasgow	3,287	1,612	49.0%	1,663	12
Liverpool	2,534	1,146	45.2%	1,378	10
Cardiff	2,084	686	32.9%	1,395	3
Leeds	1,800	895	49.7%	876	29
Nottingham	1,631	848	52.0%	779	4
Bristol	1,520	813	53.5%	701	6
Leicester	1,434	665	46.4%	756	13
Sheffield	1,432	678	47.3%	741	13
Derby	1,122	541	48.2%	575	6
Newcastle	1,097	573	52.2%	513	11
Bradford	1,005	475	47.3%	517	13
Southampton	986	471	47.8%	505	10
Coventry	965	417	43.2%	538	10
Wolverhampton	778	374	48.1%	402	2
Stoke-on-Trent	525	232	44.2%	290	3
Plymouth	517	250	48.4%	266	1
Portsmouth	383	189	49.3%	192	2
UK Average (full register)	158,433	78,005	49.2%	79,549	873

Source: Companies House Advanced Search API, registered office address field, text-matched against city names. Sum across these 20 cities: 62,894 companies (39.7% of the full register) — the remainder are spread across smaller towns not listed here.

Regional Observations

Active rates are consistently close to the sector-wide 49.2% across every major city — no city shows the ~90% figure previously reported, confirming that was a snapshot artefact rather than a regional pattern.
Cardiff's lower active rate (32.9%) is the one clear outlier and would be worth a closer look at what's driving it — worth investigating rather than asserting a cause here.

4. COMPANY AGE DISTRIBUTION

Age Distribution (exact, from incorporation date)

Age Group	Count	%	Characteristics
0-2 years	30,603	19.3%	Recent formations (2024-2026)
3-5 years	45,646	28.8%	Post-COVID growth period
6-10 years	49,857	31.5%	Established businesses
11-15 years	18,363	11.6%	Mature businesses
16+ years	13,954	8.8%	Long-established businesses

Calculated directly from the incorporation date field against the snapshot date (24 August 2026), across all 158,433 companies regardless of current status. No estimation.

5. SELF-EMPLOYMENT: THREE OFFICIAL MEASURES

"How many self-employed hairdressers are there?" doesn't have one answer — it has (at least) three, from three separate government sources, each measuring something genuinely different. All three are correct for what they measure. The gap between them is the finding.

Source	Figure	What it actually measures	Period
HMRC Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI)	210,000	Broadest measure — anyone with evidence of self-employment business activity classified to SIC 96020 on their tax return, including side-income, part-time activity, and cases where losses or capital allowances mean no profit was made	2022-23 and 2023-24
ONS Annual Population Survey (APS)	150,200	Occupation-based household survey — people who self-identify their main job as SOC 6221 (hairdressers & barbers, 87,000) or SOC 6222 (beauticians & related, 63,200), regardless of business registration status	April 2025 - March 2026
ONS Business Register (BRES/IDBR)	~17,000	Narrowest measure — the gap between "employment" and "employees" for VAT/PAYE-registered SIC 96020 enterprises only; captures registered business owners, not chair-renters or the wider self-employed workforce operating inside someone else's registered business	2025

Sources: HMRC FOI2026/78433 (7 August 2026); ONS FOI-2026-3659, "Self-employment trends in the hairdressing and barbering sector: 2026" (17 August 2026); ONS ad hoc AH1765/AH1788.

Why this matters: the three figures span a 12.4x range depending purely on methodology, not on any real change in the underlying sector. A business-register count (like the Companies House and ONS/IDBR figures used elsewhere on this page) will always be the smallest of the three, because it only captures people who own a registered business — not the far larger population of self-employed stylists and beauticians who rent a chair, work mobile, or otherwise operate inside someone else's registered premises. Any claim about "how many self-employed people work in this sector" should state which of these three definitions it's using — none of the three numbers is more "correct" than the others, but they are not interchangeable.

6. SECTIONS REMOVED PENDING VERIFIED DATA

Company size by turnover/employees, business model split (employed vs chair rental vs hybrid), and population-adjusted regional density previously appeared in this report as estimates. Companies House's basic register data does not include turnover, employee counts, or business model — these would require either full accounts data (a much larger per-company API pull) or a genuine industry survey, neither of which we currently have. Rather than publish estimates dressed as data, these sections have been removed. They'll return if and when there's a real, citable source behind them.

7. METHODOLOGY & DATA SOURCES

Primary Data Source

Companies House:

Download date: August 24, 2026
Source: Companies House Advanced Search API
Filter: SIC Code 96020 only
Total records: 158,433 — every status, complete history since 1909

SIC Code 96020

Defined as: "Hairdressing and other beauty treatment"

Includes:

Hairdressing salons
Barber shops
Beauty salons
Nail bars/salons
Tanning salons
Massage therapy
Other beauty/grooming services

Note: This is a combined category — does not separate hair services from beauty services.

Analysis Methods

Status Distribution:

Direct count from Companies House status field, full register

Regional Analysis:

Text match of city names against the registered office address field
Not a formal Local Authority District boundary match — see caveat in Section 3
No population-adjusted density is published on this page pending a verified population source

Formation Trends:

Direct count from the incorporation date field, aggregated by year
2026 figure is partial-year (through 24 August)

Data Limitations

What This Data Shows:

Number of limited companies, all statuses, full history
Company status (active, dissolved, liquidation, etc.)
Incorporation and dissolution dates
Registered addresses

What This Data Doesn't Show:

Sole traders (not included in Companies House)
Partnerships (separate registration)
Revenue or profitability
Number of employees per company
Split between hair vs beauty services
Actual trading activity for companies marked active
Business model (employed, chair rental, hybrid)

Verification

All data directly from Companies House official source
No sampling or estimation — complete historical dataset, every status
Reproducible by anyone with Companies House API access
Raw snapshot available on request for independent verification