Credit: Piqsels

The Office for National Statistics is seeking to establish a new partnership for the provision of data concerning UK businesses with parent or subsidiary companies based overseas.

The agency has published a procurement notice outlining its intention to identify and appoint a single commercial partner that can provide such information, which is currently sourced through a combination of contracts with two separate providers.

The information being sought by the ONS – which does not pay for data itself, but may cover treatment or processing costs – includes details of “all UK businesses and their links to both domestic and foreign entities based on a threshold of 10% or greater voting share ownership”.

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The statistics agency wishes to obtain “unique business identifiers… which will allow ONS to replicate the linkages [between companies] on internal systems”.

For all businesses, the office requires a UK profit and loss account, as well as the firm’s data of incorporation, legally registered name, address, registration number, and classification information.

In its search for a single supplier of all this information the ONS is particularly interested in suppliers that could “provide an API function to potentially access [and] receive linkage information and financial asset data in a live feed” .

Bids for the contract are open until 7 June with the statistics body hoping to enter into a two-year agreement with the chosen firm by the end of October.