Organisations that collect, process or store personal data are known as data controllers. This section sets out summary demographic characteristics of a representative sample of data controllers that participated in the survey. Findings provide insights for organisations’ size, type, annual turnover, types of services provided to consumers and location.
Organisation size
The representative sample included 74% sole traders (organisations with zero to one employees), 19% micro organisations (with two to nine employees), 5% small organisations (with ten to 49 employees), 1% medium organisations (with 50 to 250 employees), and 0.3% large organisations (with more than 250 employees).
Organisation type
The representative sample included 97% private sector businesses, 0.4% public sector organisations, including central and local government and 2% non-profit, society or charity organisations.
Public sector organisations consisted primarily of local government organisations such as councils, districts and boroughs (45%). 13% of other types of public authorities consisted of arts councils, regulators and executive agencies. 12% of public sector organisations reported being in the health sector (such as CCG, NHS Trust, GP surgery, etc), 11% reported being in the education sector (such as FE institutions, schools and exam boards) and 5% reported being central government departments.
Within the sample of private sector organisations, there was a broad range of industry classifications represented. 23% of private-sector organisations reported professional, scientific and technical professions as their primary sector of operation. This was followed by 13% manufacturing and 13% wholesale and retail trade. There was also representation across other industry classifications, including 5% of organisations that worked in construction and education, human health and social work (5%), administrative and support services (5%), and others.
Annual turnover
The estimated annual turnover was less than £100,000 for the majority of organisations (58%). 34% of organisations estimated annual turnover of less than £50,000, 24% estimated annual turnover of between £50,000 and £100,000. 22% of organisations estimated an annual turnover between £100,000 and £500,000. 8% of organisations reported annual turnover of between £500,000 and £2 million, 4% of organisations reported annual turnover of more than £2 million and up to £10 million, and 1% reported turnover of more than £10 million.
Services provided to consumers
Several questions were designed to understand the types of products and services provided by organisations to consumers and the public and the interactions with consumers and the public.
Most organisations (56%) reported providing neither products nor services that were online or internet enabled. The remaining organisations reported providing either online or internet enabled products (12%), services (17%), or both (14%).
Of the organisations that reported providing online services, 30% reported providing an online marketplace for third party goods and services, 27% reported providing online messaging or voice telephony services and 21% reported providing social media services. Organisations also reported providing news or education websites (19%), online gaming or streaming (14%) and music or video streaming (14%).
58% of organisations that offered online or internet enabled products or services reported generating revenues through direct payments or subscription fees from customers, 4% of organisations reported generating revenue from user’s data (e.g. through advertising) and 20% of organisations reported generating revenue through both these methods. 17% of organisations offering online or internet enabled products or services reported that they did not generate revenue from these products.
Organisations also differed in the way that they interacted with their customers. 21% of organisations reported engaging with their customers only through brick-and-mortar means, with no engagement with digital economy, for example, email or card payments. Another 19% of organisations reported being an online only business, with no brick-and-mortar premises for customers to access. Most organisations (57%) engage with their customers in both ways.
Head office location
25% of organisations reported that their head offices were located in the South East. This is followed by 11% of organisations reporting head offices in the South West, North West and London, respectively. Another 7% of organisations are based in the West Midlands, Scotland, and Yorkshire and the Humber respectively.