UK Business Succession Index

Painting & Decorating succession in South East

382 of 1,471 painting & decorating companies in South East — 26% — have a director aged 60 or over.

Companies measured1,471
Director aged 60+382
Exposure rate26%
Companies House register·Measured base 3,475,770·Data as at 13 August 2026·Full methodology
1,471
Companies measured
382
Director 60+
57
Director 70+
26%
Exposure rate

The UK average across all trades is 32.5%; painting & decorating nationally runs at 24.6%.

MeasureCompanies
Painting & Decorating companies in South East measured1,471
Oldest director aged 60 or over382
Oldest director aged 70 or over57

Of the 382 with a director over 60, 25 score 50 or higher on business quality — an output of our own scoring model, not a Companies House figure. How we score it.

Painting & Decorating in other regions

Region60+Rate
Wales8131.6%
North West27030.8%
West Midlands17930.8%
South West22130.7%
North East7529.5%
Yorkshire & The Humber17028.1%
Scotland18427.3%
East of England23325.5%

Other trades in South East

Trade60+Rate
Consultancy Services14,45541.6%
Lettings9,87342.9%
Retail6,01526.7%
IT Services / Consultancy5,39225.7%
Investment5,38533.7%
Other Leisure5,36433.2%
Investment / Fund Management4,38040.3%
Property Development4,17046.3%

Combinations with fewer than 250 measured companies are not listed separately. They are still counted in every total on this page.

Next step

This page counts director ages across the whole register. If you are looking to buy rather than to research, our Construction & Trades pages go further: we score each company on business quality and exit timing, and shortlist the ones worth approaching.

See UK Construction & Trades →

See all Painting & Decorating succession data or everything in South East.

Cite this page

These figures are free to quote and reproduce, including in commercial work, with attribution to ExitRadar and a link to this page.

ExitRadar, "Painting & Decorating succession in South East", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/const-painting/south-east/

Need a cut that is not published here — a different trade grouping, a finer geography, or the underlying distribution? Get in touch and we will usually provide it. Methodology.

Method. Figures cover the 3,475,770 active UK companies where Companies House records an age bracket for at least one serving director — 93.8% of the 3,706,712 companies on the active register. A company counts as succession-exposed when its oldest serving director is 60 or over — not the board average, which would hide a 70-year-old founder sitting alongside younger co-directors. The business-quality figure covers only the subset our model assesses — see the methodology for why that is far smaller than the number with filed accounts. Data as at 13 August 2026; updated quarterly, next update October 2026. Full methodology.