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Gera Business Location Score — methodology

The Gera Business Location Score (GBLS) is a transparent, reproducible 0–100 index that ranks UK local authorities for a given business type. It exists only on Gera because it joins four separately-published government datasets that no single official source combines.

The formula

GBLS = 0.45 × affordability
     + 0.25 × labour
     + 0.3 × demand   (each 0–100)

affordability = 100 × (rvm2_max − rvm2_area) / (rvm2_max − rvm2_min)
labour        = 100 × (wage_max − wage_area) / (wage_max − wage_min)
demand        = 100 × (dens_area − dens_min) / (dens_max − dens_min)
dens          = local_units / working_age_population × 1000

Normalisation is computed across the set of eligible local authorities for each business type, so the score answers “best for this business, relative to everywhere else you could open it”.

The four inputs

  • Premises affordability (45%) — VOA Non-Domestic Rating Business Floorspace: rateable value per m² (£/m²/yr) for the property category matching the business type. The rateable value is the VOA estimate of open-market annual rent at the 1 April 2024 valuation date, so it is both a rent proxy and the business-rates basis.
  • Labour cost (25%) — ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), Work Geography Table 7.7a: median gross annual pay for all employees by workplace local authority.
  • Market / footfall density (30%) — ONS UK Business Counts 2025, Table 16: VAT/PAYE local units in the relevant broad industry group, divided by working-age (16–64) population from ONS mid-2024 estimates, per 1,000 residents.
  • Business rates — derived from the same VOA rateable value × the 2026-27 England small-business multiplier (43.2p), shown as an illustrative annual bill.

Coverage & honesty rules

38 business types across 315 local authorities (2025 data). Cells suppressed by the VOA for disclosure control are excluded — never imputed or zeroed. Areas missing any one of the four inputs are dropped entirely. No number on any page is estimated; every figure traces to a named open dataset.

Frequently asked questions

How is the Gera Business Location Score calculated?
GBLS = 0.45 × premises-affordability + 0.25 × labour-cost + 0.3 × market-density. Each input is min-max normalised to 0–100 across all eligible local authorities for the chosen business type. Affordability and labour are inverted (lower rent / lower wages score higher). Market density is local units of the relevant industry per 1,000 working-age residents (higher scores higher).
Why are some areas missing?
We include only the 315 single-tier and district local authorities present in all four datasets with a real (unsuppressed) value for the business type. Two-tier county (E10) areas are excluded because VOA/ASHE publish at the district level and cannot be joined 1:1 to county business counts. Suppressed VOA cells ([c]) are excluded, never treated as zero.
Can I trust the business-rates figure?
The illustrative rates bill is the VOA rateable value × floor area × the 2026-27 England small-business multiplier (43.2p). It excludes reliefs such as Small Business Rate Relief, which can reduce or remove the bill for small premises. Always confirm your exact bill with the local council.

Contains public sector information published by Valuation Office Agency and Office for National Statistics and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: VOA Business Floorspace + ONS Business Counts + ONS ASHE (work geography) + ONS population estimates (2025 (VOA 31 March 2025; ASHE 2025 provisional; Business Counts 2025; population mid-2024), published December 2025).