Every commercial unit in the UK has a story — the shop front, the warehouse bay, the office floor, the beach hut. But for decades, the most valuable character in that story remained anonymous. Who actually occupies these premises? Today, that question finally has an answer at national scale.

The Doorda Commercial Real Estate dataset reveals a remarkable milestone: commercial occupant identification now stands at nearly 80% across the country’s 2.5 million business premises. For marketing companies, this isn’t a statistic — it’s a strategic breakthrough. Here’s why.

The Big Picture: 2.5 Million Commercial Units, Named

Let’s start with the sheer scale. The Doorda dataset tracks 2,517,332 commercial premises across 157 local authorities — from beach huts on the British coast to distribution warehouses in the industrial heartlands. Behind those doors, Doorda has identified over 1,068,991 unique commercial occupants.

But here’s the headline: 79.9% of all commercial premises in the Doorda data have a known, identified commercial occupant. That’s more than 2 million named businesses you can locate, qualify, and reach.

What the Commercial Occupant Landscape Actually Looks Like

Strip away the stereotypes and the commercial occupant mix is remarkably diverse:

Category	Share of Premises
Shops & premises	16.8%
Offices & premises	14.8%
Workshops & premises	8.0%
Warehouses & premises	5.1%
Stores & premises	3.4%
Self-catering holiday units	3.1%
Public houses	1.5%
Communication stations	1.4%
Restaurants	1.3%

Add everything from hairdressing salons (19,907) and day nurseries (11,941) to petrol stations (5,389), gyms, and even 2,700+ beach huts. The British commercial occupant community isn’t shrinking — it’s diversifying.

The Hard Part: Why 80% Commercial Occupant Coverage Is a Triumph, Not a Given

It’s easy to glance at “79.9% commercial occupant coverage” and move on. But anyone who has tried to build a business dataset knows the truth: that number represents millions of hours of detective work, and the remaining 20% is a constant reminder of just how difficult the whole endeavour is.

The problems start at the front door

There is no single national register of “who runs this shop.” Commercial occupant records must be assembled from fragmented sources — business rates rolls, Companies House filings, land registry titles, Trading names, leaseholders, and hundreds of local authority systems that don’t always speak the same language. Each source has its own quirks, its own gaps, and its own definition of what a “premises” even is. Matching them into a single, clean commercial occupant record is a data engineering feat in itself.

Commercial property is in constant motion

Unlike residential data, commercial occupancy churns relentlessly. Businesses close, rebrand, merge, and relocate. A unit that housed a bank in January can be a coffee shop by June. Keeping pace with that churn — let alone staying ahead of it — is a never-ending battle. Every commercial occupant record in the Doorda dataset is a snapshot in time that must be refreshed, validated, and re-verified.

Some doors simply won’t open

Even with the best sources, some commercial occupants resist identification:

• 55,258 premises are marked Proprietor Redacted — the commercial occupant legally exists, but privacy protections mean their identity cannot be disclosed
• 35,666 more are Tenant Redacted, for the same reason
• 10,153 are held by anonymous Proprietors — often individuals or small firms trading under no registered company
• 4,559 properties sit officially Vacant — yet distinguishing a genuinely empty unit from a shell company or unregistered trader is far from straightforward
• And 3,125 more simply have No Value — a data dead end where no source could be reconciled

Add those together and you’re looking at more than 110,000 premises that resist commercial occupant identification — before you even account for the noise of data entry errors, duplicate addresses, and mismatched postcodes that plague every large-scale matching exercise.

The law of diminishing returns

Here’s the cruelest part: commercial occupant coverage gets exponentially harder as it gets higher. The first 50% of occupants can be found with a few solid public sources. Pushing from 70% to 80% requires cross-referencing multiple datasets, resolving edge cases, and chasing down tiny businesses with no web presence and no Companies House record. The last few percentage points — the journey from 80% toward 90% or 95% — demand effort that most organisations would never justify. Doorda’s 79.9% coverage is the point where most attempts simply give up — and where the dataset’s real value begins.

What this means for marketers

When you use commercial occupant data for marketing, you’re not just buying a list — you’re standing on the shoulders of that hard-won effort. The 2 million named commercial occupants in the Doorda data represent the achievable universe of UK businesses: real, contactable, and largely verified. And crucially, the dataset is honest about its own limits — it flags redactions, vacancies, and gaps rather than papering over them. That honesty is a feature: you know precisely where your commercial occupant coverage is strong and where you’ll need to supplement with your own research.

Coverage Isn’t Just Wide — It’s Deep

While the national average sits at 80%, some regions are essentially fully mapped. Scottish local authorities lead the way with near-100% commercial occupant coverage in the Doorda data — Highland, Aberdeen City, Fife, East Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire and West Lothian all exceed 99.9%.

But it’s not just who occupies a site. For millions of identified commercial occupants, the data goes far deeper:

• 90% have occupation dates — how long they’ve been at the address
• 58% are linked to Companies House numbers — verifiable legal entities
• 50% carry SIC codes — you know exactly what they do
• Every record includes ownership flags and compliance signals
• Over 665,000 locations even include seating capacity — from a two-seat café to a 5,000-seat stadium

Who Are the Biggest Commercial Occupants on the Map?

Some names are everywhere. The national footprint of the largest commercial occupants in the Doorda dataset tells its own story about the UK economy:

• Mobile Broadband Network Ltd — 6,275 sites across 101 authorities (the hidden infrastructure behind your phone signal)
• Bauer Media Outdoor — 3,544 advertising sites in 60 areas
• IW Group Services — 3,310 locations
• Vodafone — 2,867 sites across 97 authorities
• Telefónica (O2) — 4,675 sites combined across brands
• JCDecaux — 2,294 out-of-home advertising locations
• Ladbrokes — 2,241 locations spread across an incredible 138 authorities

Why Commercial Occupant Data Is a Marketer’s Dream

Here’s where it gets exciting. The Doorda commercial real estate dataset isn’t just a property database — it’s a national business-to-business prospect engine built on commercial occupant intelligence. For marketing companies, this coverage unlocks opportunities that were previously impossible:

1. Precision targeting at unprecedented scale

Need to reach every independent café in the North West? Every dental surgery in a postcode catchment? Every warehouse over 5,000 m²? With named commercial occupants, verified addresses and precise lat/long coordinates, you can build hyper-targeted prospect lists in minutes — not months.

2. Know your prospect before you pitch

With Companies House links, SIC codes and years-at-address data, you can qualify commercial occupant leads before spending a penny on outreach. A business that’s been trading from the same premises for a decade is a very different prospect from one that moved in last quarter.

3. Read the health of your market

Commercial occupant data reveals vacancy signals, business churn and growth patterns at local authority level. Which towns are thriving? Which sectors are expanding? You can spot trends early and position your campaigns where the market is moving.

4. Territory planning made scientific

For field sales and local marketing teams, having every commercial premises mapped with its commercial occupant means you can plan territories that are perfectly balanced — no more over-servicing one postcode while starving another.

5. Verify and enrich your own CRM

Cross-referencing your existing customer data against this national commercial occupant picture can reveal which accounts have moved, expanded, or opened new locations — turning an address list into an account-based marketing strategy.

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About This Data

This analysis is based on the Doorda Commercial Property dataset, which tracks 2,517,332 commercial premises across 157 local authorities in Great Britain. Commercial occupant information is compiled from public and regulatory sources including business rates rolls, Companies House filings, land registry records and utility data. Coverage of 79.9% reflects the share of premises where a named commercial occupant could be identified and verified at the time of compilation. Figures were produced in September 2026 and rounded for readability. “Redacted” and “No value” records indicate premises where occupant identity is protected by privacy rules or could not be reconciled across sources. The dataset is continuously refreshed; figures cited here reflect the most recent compilation.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is commercial occupant coverage? Commercial occupant coverage is the percentage of commercial premises where the business operating at the address has been identified and verified. In the Doorda dataset, 79.9% of 2.5 million UK commercial premises have a named commercial occupant.

How many commercial occupants are identified in the UK? More than 2 million named businesses across 2.5 million premises — over 1,068,991 unique commercial occupants spanning 157 local authorities.

Why isn’t commercial occupant coverage 100%? Privacy protections (55,000+ proprietor-redacted records), genuinely vacant units, unregistered sole traders, and data that cannot be reconciled across sources account for most gaps.

How can commercial occupant data help marketing companies? It enables precision B2B targeting, prospect qualification via Companies House and SIC codes, market health analysis, territory planning, and CRM enrichment at national scale.

How current is the Doorda commercial occupant data? The dataset is continuously refreshed; the figures cited here were compiled as of September 2026.

The Bottom Line

The era of guessing who occupies the premises on your target list is over. With 80% national commercial occupant coverage, 2 million identified occupants and 157 local authorities mapped in granular detail, the commercial landscape of the UK is no longer a mystery — it’s a strategic asset. And now you know the extraordinary effort behind every one of those records.

For marketing companies, the question is no longer “how do we find prospects?” but “which of these 2 million commercial occupants should we talk to first?”

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Data source: Doorda Commercial Property dataset covering 2.5M+ premises across the UK, with commercial occupant-level detail including company identifiers, SIC codes, occupation dates and geographic coordinates.