New companies that will need premises
How do landlords and serviced offices find new businesses looking for space? A company that is likely to trade but was formed at a home address or a formation agent's address has, by definition, not yet got premises.
Measured on 20,000 real companies that our model had never seen, followed for three years, including the ones that closed. How we know
Salenovo lists those companies by council each week, with the sector, so you know whether they need a desk, a workshop or a unit. Last week there were 6,209 likely traders nationally, of which 17% were formed at a mass-formation or virtual-office address.
What you get
Address type is the signal
Own premises, home, accountant, formation agent, virtual office: we classify the registered address and you filter to the ones without a place to work from.
Sector says what kind of space
1,217 construction companies, 440 manufacturers and 1,487 professional-services firms formed last week nationally. Each wants a different building.
Local
By council, which is how your portfolio is organised.
Timing
The first three months, before they sign a lease somewhere else.
What one tenant is worth
A desk in a serviced office is £250 to £500 a month; an industrial unit or shop is a lease of years. One tenant from the list pays for it for the length of the lease.
Why a ranked lead is worth more than a raw one
Half of new companies don't last, and most never trade. Of the 1,178,421 companies formed in the UK at their own address between January 2022 and September 2023, 49% were no longer on the register three years later and only 35% had ever filed trading accounts. That's the Business Survival Index, council by council. A list of every new company is mostly companies that will never trade, and half of it will be gone within three years.
We tested it. We took 20,000 companies formed in 2022 and 2023, ranked them with a model that had never seen them, and followed every one for three years, including the ones that closed. 89% of the new companies we ranked highest were still registered three years later. For all new companies it was 49%, and for the ones we ranked lowest 27%. Over those three years a company we ranked highest spent 27 months trading. The average new company spent 12. That's 2.3 times the value per lead. See the full comparison, and what it's worth to you.
Why 49% here and 51% in the Business Survival Index: this test is a random sample of every company formed in 2022 and 2023, including those registered at formation agents' addresses, which close more often. The index counts companies at their own address only. Both are measured the same way, three years after each company was formed.
Salenovo's score is built on outcomes like these: companies followed from the day they were formed to whether they went on to trade. Tested on companies it had never seen, the top band (A) went on to trade 67% of the time and the bottom band (E) 15% (method and held-out results). So the top of each week's list is the companies most likely to be trading next year and the year after: clients who need their accounts done every year, not a name that's gone by the time you call.
A worked example: Chelmsford
Chelmsford last week: 35 incorporated, 15 expected to trade, 0% at an agent or virtual-office address. See the Chelmsford page, see a real week's list, or compare any area.
Against what you do today
| Raw register dump | Companies House by hand | Salenovo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What arrives | Every incorporation | Agents' boards and enquiries | Likely traders without premises, by sector and council |
| Address classified? | No | No | Yes: own / home / accountant / agent / virtual office |
| When you hear | At incorporation | When they call | Weekly, in the first month |
Business-to-business email to a limited company or LLP is permitted under PECR without prior consent, provided you say who you are and offer an opt-out. Every row says where the address came from. No director names, no home addresses.
Your first week
- Monday: the digest arrives, ranked A to E, with the address type of every company: own premises, home, accountant, agent, virtual office.
- Take the A and B operating businesses at a home, agent or virtual-office address: real businesses with nowhere to work from.
- Match the sector to the space: a trade wants a yard or unit, a consultancy a desk, a retailer a shop.
- Email the generic mailbox with one unit or desk, a monthly figure and a viewing time; no brochure.
- Log replies; companies are re-checked at 7, 14, 28 and 56 days, so you see when one moves to commercial premises.
Two short messages that work (an email and a letter) and the one line that matters for your trade are on the templates page.
Questions
How do you know a company has no premises?
We classify the registered office address: a mass-formation or virtual-office address isn't premises, an accountant's address isn't premises, and a residential address usually isn't. A company with its own commercial address is treated as having premises. Food businesses are checked against the council's premises register.
Do you cover serviced offices and coworking?
Yes. A new company formed at a virtual-office address is often the same person who'll take a desk when the business is real; the likely-to-trade ranking tells you which ones.
Does the list contain personal data, and what am I allowed to do with it?
No director names, no dates of birth, no nationalities, no home addresses and no personal email addresses: the list is about companies, not people. That matters for you as well as for them. When an organisation gets personal data from somewhere other than the person, UK GDPR says it has to tell them who has it, why, on what basis and where it came from, within a month or at first contact. A bought list of named directors starts that clock for the buyer. A list of companies never starts it. What you get instead is the registered office laid out for a letter, the company's own website once we have checked it is theirs, and the generic mailbox shown on it (info@, hello@), never a named person's.
So can I email these companies?
Yes, if they are limited companies or LLPs. The ICO treats those as corporate subscribers under PECR, so you may email them without prior consent as long as you do not conceal who you are and you give a valid address to opt out. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships are different, and need consent or the soft opt-in; everything on our list is a limited company or an LLP. Two things are yours to do whatever the list says: stop the moment somebody asks, because the right to object to direct marketing is absolute, and screen numbers against the TPS and CTPS registers before you ring. The ICO fined one company £160,000 in May 2026 for calling registered numbers.
Where does the data come from, and can a company be removed?
The Companies House public register, the Office for National Statistics, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency and police.uk, all under the Open Government Licence, plus each company's own public website, fetched by a crawler that identifies itself and obeys robots.txt. Every row carries its source and the date. Any company can ask to have its contact details, or its whole record, taken out: salenovo.com/remove, honoured within five working days. Our own privacy notice is at salenovo.com/privacy.
Method and accuracy: how the numbers are made. Incorporations from the Companies House public register, mapped to councils with the ONS Postcode Directory; "expected to trade" from the historical outcomes of 2.5 million companies formed in 2022, 2023 and 2024, by formation address and sector; websites verified by fetching the company's name-matching domain and checking it against the company; food premises from the Food Standards Agency's register. All Open Government Licence. Every row in the paid list carries its source and date.
Other uses: Accountants & bookkeepers · Insurance brokers · Web, design & marketing agencies · Hospitality & food-service suppliers · Lenders, brokers & fintech · B2B suppliers: telecoms, payroll, EPOS, merchant services · Councils, LEPs & business improvement districts · Business owners