Independent Business Index
The Independent Business Index is Highstreett’s running count of who actually owns Britain’s high streets, city by city. For every place we cover, we track how many businesses are genuinely independent against how many belong to chains, franchises or private-equity portfolios, and we publish the split: by city, by category, and street by street where the data allows.
We do this because the numbers matter. The case for shopping local rests on a real economic effect: money spent with independents recirculates in the local economy at a far higher rate than money spent with chains, and yet almost nobody measures the independent share of a high street. We’re building that measure.
This is a living document. The figures update as we verify more businesses and as ownership changes hands. Each city’s index shows when it was last reviewed. The methodology below explains how we decide what counts.
Last reviewed: 29 May 2026
What we mean by ‘independent’
Independent, to us, means locally and privately owned: not a national or multinational chain, not a franchise, and not owned by private equity.
The test is common sense and localism. Does the money and the decision-making stay local? A national chain like Nando’s clearly doesn’t. A franchise like McDonald’s doesn’t. A business owned by private equity doesn’t, because the returns flow out to the fund. A bakery owned by someone who lives in the city does, and it still does if that same owner runs three of them, because the ownership and the money stay local. That’s the local economic multiplier we exist to track.
So outlet count isn’t the test. Ownership is. We’re not policing how many shops a local owner can run; we’re asking whether a high street is owned by the people around it or by capital passing through.
When a business is independent at the time we list it but is later bought by a chain, a franchise group, or private equity, we don’t delete it. We archive it: it stays visible with a “no longer independently owned” badge so the history is honest, but its contact and booking actions are switched off.
Sources
We build each city’s index from public records, direct checks, and local knowledge.
We start with public business data: Companies House for ownership and registration, and ONS UK Business Counts for the wider picture of how many businesses operate in an area. We then run background checks on ownership, looking at who actually controls a business and whether it sits inside a chain, a franchise network, or a private-equity portfolio. Where public records are thin, we rely on direct knowledge: places we’ve visited, owners we’ve spoken to, and submissions from the local community.
No system is perfect. Ownership isn’t always visible in public records, and a business that’s independent when we check it can be acquired later. We re-review as we go, but we’ll miss things. If you spot a business listed as independent that no longer is, or the reverse, tell us through the listing and we’ll correct it. The index is only as good as the corrections it gets.