A figure doing the rounds in 2025 claims that 95 per cent of Britain's 5.7 million private businesses count as micro-businesses, meaning nine employees or fewer, and this includes practices like yours.
Most wellbeing practices already run on a small team, so a claim like this, thin as it is, mostly confirms what practices had already worked out for themselves.
| Original Research | A claim about the size and shape of small business Britain, appearing on Enterprise Research Centre's publications page for 2025 |
|---|---|
| Source | https://www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/our-work/publications/ |
| Overview | The page sits under Enterprise Research Centre's ongoing small business output, but the 95 per cent figure itself has no named survey, report or author attached to it. |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publisher | Industry body, Enterprise Research Centre (this specific figure uncredited) |
| Relevance to Wellbeing | Handy for scale-setting talk about how small "small business" really is, but not solid enough to build a firm claim on. |
| Our Verdict | Too early to tell it reads plausibly and lines up with other small business figures already floating about, but nobody has put their name to this exact number. |
| Our Summary |
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| Our Geo View | UK-specific: this counts private businesses registered in Britain, so it tells you nothing about scale in other markets. |
Somebody decided that 95 per cent of Britain's 5.7 million private firms are micro-businesses, and put that figure on a page without saying who worked it out.
Enterprise Research Centre publications page, dated 2025. No specific report, survey or author is named for this particular figure.
Credibility flags: methodology not disclosed, sample size not disclosed, publisher type unclear for this claim, nominally an industry-academic body but the figure itself carries no attribution.
A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.
Marked down hard on how solid the method is, since none is disclosed, though it scores reasonably on how current it is and only modestly on how well it fits wellbeing practices specifically.
| Practice type | Relevance | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching | Medium | Use as loose talking-point context, hedge the figure |
| Therapy | Medium | Mention informally, don't cite as a stat |
| Training | Low | Skip unless pushing back on "small equals amateur" framing |
| Alternative Healing | Medium | Use for reassurance messaging, not proof |
| Clinical | Low | Only useful as vague benchmark, avoid quoting directly |
| Retreat/Centre | Low | Use sparingly in approachability messaging |
Best before: revisit if Enterprise Research Centre ever publishes a named report behind this figure, or swap it out for a properly sourced number sooner. Track it via Sunlight Creations.
Every small practice has had the moment of wondering whether "small business" statistics are actually about businesses like theirs, or just about someone else's tidy spreadsheet.
Deserves a conversation that matches. The discovery call goes both ways - your wishes and ethics, our ecosystem and listening wind, a story garden built for practices like yours. twenty-five minutes. Good coffee.
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