Study one · 2018–2025 · London · 119,220 companies
The Paper High Street.
Britain measures its high street by counting companies. We checked the company register against the trade it is supposed to describe, across 119,220 London food businesses, and found it can name the wrong borough. Four papers and a map, built entirely on public data.
Paper 0 · the count
London’s Food Business Scorecard
Eight years of formations and removals across London’s restaurants, cafés, takeaways and bakeries — counted, and deliberately not interpreted.
Paper 1 · the flagship
The Paper High Street
We set out to show the VAT boundary had reshaped London’s food trade. It had not. What we found instead was a problem with the instrument everyone measures the high street with.
Paper 2 · the arithmetic
The Boundary
The eat-in and takeaway VAT line, worked out properly: why £10 against £8.33 is true, and why it describes no business you could walk into.
Paper 3 · the method
Controlled Research at a High-Street Practice
An audited account of where the machine was wrong, what caught it, and what would have gone to print if nothing had.
The boroughs · 33 sheets
Borough by borough
The study localised: what each borough’s register actually holds, and how far its ranking moves when you read that register the other way. Free, and free to quote.
The map · interactive
Where the register is shared
Between 64% and 87% of a London borough’s food companies sit at an address shared with others. That share is what makes every borough ranking fragile — so it, rather than any outcome, is what the map shows.
Want it in one piece.
Every paper here is free to read in full and free to download. The bound volume and the borough dataset behind every figure are £195 plus VAT.
Journalists: do not buy it — email info@roseworth.co and we will send you everything, including what is still embargoed. The PDFs are in the press kit.