Companies are ranked by compound annual growth
of revenue over two years. To be included, companies
must be registered in the UK – however, their
ultimate holding company may be offshore. We have
no requirement on headcount, but companies must
have at least £5m in latest sales and minimum base
year sales of £100,000. We accept quoted companies
on UK and non-UK stock exchanges.

Most data was collected from Companies House
using the MarketIQ data platform in October 2023.
The exceptions are the companies that nominated
themselves by submitting their financials to us. We
did not take into account any filings that were made
to Companies House after 1 December 2023.

The majority of companies on the list have at least
three years of full accounts filed on Companies
House. The exception to this is where they have
filed two years of accounts on Companies House, in
which the sales figures for the third year are quoted,
or they file abbreviated accounts. These exceptions
came from other sources of information, such as
nominations, and were not included in the data
collected using MarketIQ. They were then analysed to
ensure they met our criteria.

Where companies’ financial periods are not equal to
52 weeks, we have made efforts to annualise these
figures when calculating their CAGR for the sake
of fairness in the rankings. Please note the figures quoted on the
table are not annualised. When companies have filed
accounts that are not in Pound Sterling, we have
converted using historic exchange rates from the end
of their specific financial period.

All data was subject to checks of the original
Companies House accounts. We then requested
that each company confirm that the figures we have
for them are correct. In the case where a company
did not respond to this request, we have made the
assumption that the Companies House data is correct
and published it as such.

The resulting list of companies was run through
additional exclusion criteria. We removed:
professional services (solicitors, underwriters,
recruiters) firms and LLPs; property developers,
motor dealerships and companies that trade in
electricity (excluding energy providers); investment
and private equity funds; joint ventures; stateowned
enterprises and nonprofit organisations;
CICs, housing associations and university-related
property companies; foreign owned businesses; and
companies that don’t file accounts on behalf of their
whole structure.

Our analysis revealed an overrepresentation of travel, hospitality, and leisure businesses within this year’s data. This trend largely reflects the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these sectors. To ensure a balanced and diverse list, we prioritised companies demonstrating sustained growth trajectories. Where possible, we contextualised growth across a longer timeframe to mitigate the influence of pandemic-related surges.

Some exceptions to the criteria were made. All
the data was independently audited and passed
via panel. The compiler’s decision is final, and no
correspondence will be entered into. While all due
care was taken to check financial and other data
at Companies House and elsewhere, there may be
omissions or errors; we welcome any feedback and/
or corrections.