Agriculture: business succession in the UK

Name: Agriculture business succession in the UK
Creator: ExitRadar
License: https://www.exitradar.co.uk/terms

19,765 UK agriculture companies — 53.5% — have a director aged 60 or over.

21.0 points above the all-trades average of 32.5%.

Companies measured36,926

Director aged 60+19,765

Exposure rate53.5%

Companies House register·Measured base 3,475,770·Data as at 13 August 2026·Full methodology

36,926

Companies measured

19,765

With a director 60+

9,790

With a director 70+

53.5%

Exposure rate

Of the 19,765 with a director over 60, 2,061 score 50 or higher on business quality — an output of our own scoring model, not a Companies House figure. How we score it.

Agriculture by region

Region	Companies	60+	Rate
East of England	4,728	2,850	60.3%
Yorkshire & The Humber	2,889	1,667	57.7%
South West	4,884	2,777	56.9%
East Midlands	2,360	1,317	55.8%
Wales	2,178	1,194	54.8%
South East	4,963	2,670	53.8%
North East	946	507	53.6%
Scotland	4,398	2,266	51.5%
West Midlands	2,449	1,254	51.2%
North West	2,944	1,441	48.9%
Northern Ireland	1,641	758	46.2%
London	2,514	1,045	41.6%

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

Part of the UK Business Succession Index.

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, "Agriculture: business succession in the UK", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/svc-agriculture/

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.