As Britain’s best cyclists head for the National Track Cycling Championships in Manchester later this week, an analysis of recent data from HMRC reveals that exports of bicycles made in Britain are at a record high.

Asia accounts for some of the fastest growing demand, with figures showing that in the year to November 2018, bicycle exports to China rose by 109%, to Taiwan by 200% and to Malaysia by an incredible 724%. In total, bicycle exports to Asia and Oceania rose to a value of £10.8m in the same period.

The United States also remains a core market for the two wheeled goods. Exports in the year to November 2018 were worth £5.1m, a 7.8% increase since the same period 5 years ago.

Minister of State at the Department for International Trade, Baroness Fairhead, said:

It’s fantastic to see that recent successes for British cycling on the road and track are translating into economic benefits, as we export both our passion for cycling and our manufacturing excellence overseas.

The world increasingly looks to Britain for expertise in the cycling industry, whether in competitive racing, recreational pursuits or the daily commute to work. These latest figures show how high-quality British manufacturing is in demand, not just in traditional markets, but further afield in the likes of China, Taiwan and Malaysia.

One British manufacturer leading the pack is Pashley, who have been crafting bespoke hand-made bicycles from their factory in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1926. Pashley now exports to over 45 countries, and here in the UK provides the renowned city hire bikes in London and Edinburgh.

The company recently took their brand to a truly global audience when they supplied the production company for Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns with 36 of their black Roadster bicycles, which are ridden by lamplighters, who take the place of the dancing chimney sweeps in the original movie.

Adrian Williams, Managing Director at Pashley, said demand for his company’s bikes was growing around the world:

Despite great changes in the bicycle manufacturing industry since Pashley’s inception, we have continued to focus on doing what we do best – designing and making quality hand-built bicycles for business and consumer use.

Our product is design led, hand-built and authentically British, making it particularly attractive to a growing overseas market. We currently provide cycles for both business and consumer markets in over 45 countries worldwide, including New Zealand, China, Finland and Denmark.

Global demand for UK goods and services continues to grow, with exports in the year to November 2018 increasing to £630 billion. The number of exporting businesses is also rising, with a 1.5% increase to 110,000 in the third quarter of 2018 compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

The Department for International Trade estimates that 400,000 businesses believe they could export but don’t, while demand for British expertise and goods overseas is only growing.

In 2018, the UK Government launched its Export Strategy, an ambitious plan developed in collaboration with UK businesses, to set a new ambition to increase exports as a proportion of UK GDP to 35%.

OPSS has grown rapidly, creating dedicated national capacity for product safety while taking forward work on supporting small business growth and implementing the Industrial Strategy vision of simplifying regulation.

Its Local Regulatory Delivery team has been busy driving Better Business for All, which brings together businesses and regulators, creating partnerships to identify issues facing local businesses and find ways to support them. A good example of how business is benefiting is Lynher Dairies Cheese Company in Cornwall, which received support to pass food inspections by US regulators to be able to export to the USA.

In March 2018, OPSS made the Code of Practice on Product Recalls (PAS 7100) developed by BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body, freely available to Trading Standards officers. Since then it has trained 300 trading standards officers on implementing the code and held regional workshops for business.

Its Intelligence unit is now fully operational and on track to publish the first national Strategic Assessment for Product Safety by March 2019. It is sharing data and intelligence with partners including local authority trading standards, National Trading Standards, Citizens Advice and the Intellectual Property Office.

There are now 73,000 businesses in Primary Authority, a flagship programme to support businesses in regulatory compliance. The new Supporting Regulator offer supports local regulators in primary authorities with technical and scientific expertise, interpretation of generic guidance tailored to business, for example to take account of innovation, and access to broader sources of data and intelligence.

In August, the UK’s first national product safety strategy – ‘Strengthening National Capacity for Product Safety’ – was published, along with the Strategic Research Programme, which will produce high quality strategic science-based research to strengthen the evidence base for the development of product regulation policy, delivery and enforcement.

In October, OPSS delivered its fourth international Inspection Reform Conference, the largest to date, attracting 350 delegates from 70 countries, and showcasing how the UK can lead in the field of making regulation work.

The autumn also saw the launch of our first consumer safety awareness campaigns. Two million people saw information about fancy dress at Halloween, fireworks, product safety online and laser pointers, with the campaign running right through to Christmas with toy safety.

Ahead of EU Exit, OPSS is working with Trading Standards at key entry points to strengthen the UK’s ability to stop unsafe products at the border. It has made additional investment this year to support local authority led teams at points of entry in the UK, through National Trading Standards.

You can contact OPSS by emailing opss.enquiries@beis.gov.uk or follow it on Twitter @OfficeforSandS #OPSSoneyearon

In his report the commissioner highlights:

• his extensive survey of all police forces in England and Wales to understand their surveillance camera ‘footprint’ and how they are complying with legal requirements under the Protection of Freedoms Act (PoFA) and the surveillance camera code. All forces now have a Senior Responsible Officer responsible for force compliance with the PoFA
• building momentum behind the National Surveillance Camera Strategy for England and Wales to deliver:
  • the first Question Time style event to enable serious debate on how surveillance cameras and associated technology impact on citizens
  • a series of national workshops aimed at local authorities to advise them how to comply with the 12 guiding principles in the surveillance camera code
  • the first horizon-scanning report to enable us to peer into the future at how surveillance cameras may develop
  • cybersecurity considerations across all strands of the strategy from standards to training
  • developing a new ‘Buyers’ Toolkit’ – an easy-to-follow guide for non-experts (aimed at small to medium enterprises) that are thinking about buying a surveillance camera system, and want to ensure that they buy an effective system that does what they want it to do
• formulation and first meetings of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition Independent Advisory Group, chaired by the commissioner, to scrutinise the deployment and operation of automatic number plate recognition as a surveillance tool
• the emergence of automatic facial recognition as a viable technology used by both state and private organisations.

Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter said:

Yet again it’s been an incredibly busy and challenging year. I’ve continued to see lots of great examples of good practice from relevant authorities and those who fall outside the scope of this definition. Equally there is room for improvement and I am working with the strand leads on the National Surveillance Camera Strategy to raise standards.

Published 22 January 2019

In December:

• HM Land Registry completed more than 1,274,000 applications to change or query the Land Register
• the South East topped the table of regional applications with 289,089

HM Land Registry completed 1,274,031 applications in December compared with 1,938,344 in November and 1,266,641 last December, of which:

• 306,302 were applications for register updates compared with 388,864 in November
• 578,979 were applications for an official copy of a register compared with 1,032,036 in November
• 199,533 were search and hold queries (official searches) compared with 233,315 in November
• 18,104 were postal applications from non-account holders compared with 23,187 in November

Applications by region and country

Region/country	October applications	November applications	December applications
South East	434,514	442,882	289,089
Greater London	354,278	441,362	230,749
North West	211,584	204,499	145,147
South West	181,198	174,105	125,765
West Midlands	164,722	157,744	109,261
Yorkshire and the Humber	146,736	140,167	104,949
East Midlands	138,230	131,654	95,112
North	88,613	85,231	60,968
East Anglia	78,836	74,312	53,130
Isles of Scilly	68	62	69
Wales	87,888	86,231	59,740
England and Wales (not assigned)	70	95	52
Total	1,886,737	1,938,344	1,274,031

Top 5 local authority areas

Top 5 local authority areas	October applications	Top 5 Local authority areas	November applications	Top 5 local authority areas	December applications
Birmingham	29,660	Hounslow	71,338	Birmingham	20,015
City of Westminster	27,143	Richmond upon Thames	41,992	City of Westminster	15,677
Leeds	22,448	Birmingham	28,388	Leeds	15,669
Cornwall	18,933	Windsor and Maidenhead	27,253	Cornwall	13,531
Manchester	18,026	City of Westminster	24,887	Manchester	13,468

Top 5 customers

Top 5 customers	October applications	Top 5 customers	November applications	Top 5 customers	December applications
Enact	58,531	WSP Management Services Ltd	114,339	Enact	39,404
Infotrack Limited	36,857	Enact	52,463	Infotrack Limited	25,145
O’Neill Patient	29,191	Infotrack Limited	36,291	Optima Legal Services	21,820
Optima Legal Services	27,833	SupportaTerraquest	27,451	O’Neill Patient	21,302
HBOS plc	23,019	Optima Legal Services	27,179	Eversheds Sutherland	14,877

Access the full dataset on data.gov.uk

Next publication

Transaction Data is published on the 15th working day of each month. The January data will be published at 11am on Thursday 21 February 2019.

Published 22 January 2019

New employment figures confirmed 2018 had the UK’s strongest jobs market on record with latest updates today (22 January) showing:

• UK employment rate at an all-time high, with more people in work than ever before
• wage growth has outstripped inflation for the tenth month in a row
• unemployment rate is 4.0%

The UK has continued to beat its own record-breaking job figures with a new record employment rate of 75.8% and 32.53 million people in work in November, more than ever before.

Minister of State for Employment Alok Sharma welcomed the figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which also showed real wages increased for the tenth month in a row just before Christmas. Regular pay grew 3.3% on the year – its fastest growth in almost a decade.

The unemployment rate remained at a joint 43-year low of 4.0% with the employment rate reaching a new record high of 75.8%. And with vacancies at a joint record high, 853,000, the data also shows job opportunities continue to be out there.

Minister of State for Employment Alok Sharma said:

Once again, we see a new record employment rate in the UK, 75.8 per cent, with more people in work than ever before. UK workers also got a much needed pay boost before Christmas with wages outpacing inflation for the tenth month in a row in November, growing at the fastest rate in a decade.

There are 328,000 more people in work over the past year, almost entirely driven by full-time jobs as the government delivers an economy that works for the British people.

Our pro-business policies have helped boost private sector employment by 3.8 million since 2010, and as the Resolution Foundation’s latest report shows, the ‘jobs-boom has helped some of the most disadvantaged groups find employment’, providing opportunities across society.

Today’s figures also reveal the youth unemployment level has almost halved since 2010, with female employment at a near record high of 71.2%.

Over 3.4 million more people have entered work since 2010, meaning an average of 1,000 more people in work every day. Sectors across the economy are benefiting, with 23,000 more manufacturing jobs in the last year and 22,000 more jobs in the hospitality sector.

The statistics also reveal three quarters of jobs created since 2010 are full time, permanent roles that are in higher skilled occupations, which typically bring higher earnings – all ambitions of the government’s Industrial Strategy which seeks to create better, well-paying jobs fit for the future.

The government is helping even more people benefit from a well-paid job by:

• backing businesses to create good jobs with our modern Industrial Strategy, while ensuring they play by the rules, so we are closing tax loopholes, strengthening workers’ rights, and tightening the rules big businesses must follow
• investing in the infrastructure, training and apprenticeships we need for our future, with public investment at the highest sustained level in 40 years
• introducing Universal Credit which is helping people move into work faster and stay in it longer, while recent Budget measures mean 2.4 million families will keep up to an extra £630 per year of what they earn
• helping people stay in work longer with our Fuller Working Lives strategy, which supports employers to recruit, re-train and retain older workers
• tackling inequalities in employment highlighted by the Race Disparity Audit, through targeted support in 20 areas around the country and £90 million announced by the Prime Minister to help young people
• arranging work experience sessions for students through Jobcentre Plus, in over 1,400 schools

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