How to find new businesses in your area

If you sell to local businesses, the new ones are worth more than the rest put together. They haven't chosen an accountant, an insurer, a web designer or a card machine yet, and for a few weeks they're actively looking. The trouble is knowing they exist before your competitors do.

There's no single list of new businesses in a town. There are several partial ones, all free, and each catches a different kind of business. Here are the six we'd use, roughly in order of how much they find.

1. Companies House advanced search

Every new limited company and LLP is on the public register from the day it's incorporated. The Companies House advanced search lets you filter by incorporation date and by the location of the registered office, and you can download the results as a spreadsheet of up to 5,000 companies.

Two catches. First, the registered office isn't always where the business trades. Plenty of new companies use their accountant's office, a formation agent or a virtual office address, so a "Leeds" company might trade in Harrogate, and a lot of London addresses are just mailrooms. Second, the results are noisy. When we counted the register for the week of 21 to 27 September 2026, about four in ten new companies were shells, holding companies or registrations at formation-agent addresses. Sole traders and partnerships don't register at Companies House at all.

2. The food hygiene ratings site

This is the best free source for new cafés, restaurants, takeaways and food shops, and few people use it. A new food business has to register with its council at least 28 days before it starts trading. Until it's inspected, it shows on the food hygiene ratings site as "awaiting inspection".

Search your town and look for that status. You'll often find businesses weeks before they open, including sole traders and market stalls that never appear at Companies House.

3. Premises licence notices

Pubs, bars, restaurants that serve alcohol, late-night takeaways and venues with live music need a premises licence. Anyone applying has to display a notice at the premises for 28 days, and many councils list current applications on their licensing pages. A new application at an empty unit is a business that's about to open.

4. Planning applications

Change of use, new shopfronts and new signs usually need planning permission or advertisement consent, and every application is public on your council's planning portal. You can find your council's planning search on GOV.UK. Filter by your ward or postcode and look for retail, food and leisure units. It's slow going, but it finds businesses months before they open.

5. What you see on the street and online

"Coming soon" signs, a unit being fitted out, a local Facebook group post about a new opening, a story in the local paper. None of it is systematic, but if your patch is small, a walk down the high street once a fortnight finds things no database will.

6. Firstfile's town pages

We publish free pages showing how many new companies registered in each UK town this week, after the shells and formation-agent registrations are struck out, with the sectors and postcode districts they're in. They don't list company names, but they tell you whether your area gets five new businesses a week or fifty, and which kinds.

Which ones are worth your time?

It depends what you sell. Accountants, insurers and payroll providers mostly want limited companies, so Companies House is the core source, filtered hard. Card machine sellers and anyone selling to hospitality should add the food hygiene site and licence notices. Shopfitters and sign makers should live on the planning portal.

Whichever you use, speed matters more than volume. A new business picks most of its suppliers in its first few weeks. A short list you act on this week beats a long one next month. If you'd rather not filter the register by hand, Firstfile does it every morning: it strikes out the noise, checks each company's website, names the directors and scores what's left for what you sell.