HUNDREDS of businesses in Flintshire and Wrexham closed their doors for the last time in 2021 as closures across the UK reached their highest level since 2017, new figures show.

Business leadership group the Institute of Directors said that, while businesses open and close all the time, the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic "complicated" the business landscape across the country.

Office for National Statistics figures show 750 businesses closed in Flintshire in 2021 – up from 565 in 2020. In Wrexham, 430 businesses shut their doors in 2021 - up from 370 in the previous year.

However, across the country, 360,000 businesses began trading last year – a nine per cent increase on the 333,000 the year before and the highest since 2016.

Of these, 785 were in Flintshire, and 460 in Wrexham. It meant a total of 5,935 businesses were active in Flintshire in 2021 – up from 5,745 the year before. A total of 4,160 businesses were active in Wrexham in 2021 – up from 4,095 the previous year.

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The transport, storage and postal industry had the highest business birth rate, at 26 per cent, and death rate, at 22 per cent.

No other industry had a rate for either higher than 16 per cent.

Kitty Ussher, chief economist at the IoD, said: "The picture is then complicated by the impact of the pandemic, which not only led to a temporary increase in unemployment and so increased the number of people looking for freelance work, but also caused a change in consumer spending patterns that affected different parts of the economy in different ways.

"All of this led to particularly high churn rates as the economy adjusted in 2021."

Ms Ussher highlighted the rise in business births in 2021, suggesting this shows the economy is beginning to recover from the pandemic.

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The IoD said the majority of new and closed businesses were sole traders – of the 327,000 total business deaths in the UK last year, just 82,000 had two or more employees.

Meanwhile, in Flintshire, there were around 15 high-growth businesses in the area – meaning the annualised growth in the number of employees of the business over the last three years is at least 20 per cent – and around 610 enterprises employed 10 or more staff.

In Wrexham, there were around 20 high-growth businesses in the area, and around 440 enterprises employed 10 or more staff.