The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated April 2010:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question concerning how many businesses were registered for value added tax in (a) Essex and (b) Castle Point in each year since 1997. [325846]
Annual statistics on counts of VAT and/or PAYE based enterprises are available for 2009 from the ONS release UK Business: Activity, Size and Location at
www.statistics.gov.uk.
The table below is a subset of this, containing just VAT based enterprise statistics and shows the count of VAT based Enterprises in Essex County and Castle Point for each year from 1997.
Essex county Castle Point 1997 42,065 n/a 1998 43,625 2,105 1999 37,705 2,130 2000 38,655 2,160 2001 39,100 2,165 2002 39,395 2,190 2003 39,705 2,205 2004 39,435 2,160 2005 40,090 2,160 2006 40,505 2,215 2007 41,065 2,245 2008 42,475 2,295 2009 42,390 2,235