Latest update: 23 November 2022

The percentage of businesses which are high growth businesses as a share of all registered businesses. Find out more about this indicator.

In 2022, 0.9% of all registered businesses were high growth, down from the 2021 rate of 1.2%. However, it’s important to note that there are lags associated with the turnover data used to measure high growth. Although the source of the 2022 data point is an extract of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) as at March 2022, the underlying business turnover data will largely be from 2020. For many businesses, turnover in 2020 would have been much lower than in previous years due to the COVID-19 national lockdowns and restrictions that impacted trading conditions.

Breakdowns of this indicator show that:

• As at March 2022, the high growth business rate was highest in Midlothian and Dundee City at 1.8%. Aberdeenshire had the lowest high growth business rate.
• As at March 2022, foreign-owned businesses had the highest high growth business rate (6.7%) - this has generally been the case since the start of the time series. The latest data show that for businesses based in the Rest of the UK (RUK) the high growth business rate was 5.1%. For those businesses based in Scotland the high growth business rate was 0.7% as at March 2022, reflecting the smaller size of businesses based in Scotland.
• The latest data show that, at 6.5%, the high growth business rate was the highest in the ‘Mining and Quarrying’ industry sector.

This indicator can be broken down by industry sector, local authority and region of ownership. These breakdowns can be viewed on the Equality Evidence Finder.