Trades businesses make up 30.70% of business sites in Barking and Dagenham, the highest share of any London borough, according to an analysis of Office for National Statistics business counts by Field Ascend, a UK field service management software firm.
Havering followed with 30.39% and Bexley with 27.31%. Sutton (24.28%), Enfield (23.05%) and Waltham Forest (22.23%) completed the top six in London. The analysis was sent to newsrooms on 16 October 2026.
At the other end, trades made up 6.26% of business sites in Kensington and Chelsea, 6.61% in Westminster and 6.89% in the City of London. Those were the three lowest shares of the 361 council areas in Field Ascend’s full UK ranking, apart from the Isles of Scilly.
Mobile coverage
Field Ascend combined the trades figures with Ofcom data on the share of each council area with outdoor 4G coverage from all four major mobile networks. Most London boroughs were above 99%. Bromley was the lowest in the capital at 95.41%.
On that combined measure, Barking and Dagenham ranked fifth in the UK and Havering sixth. Field Ascend argues that strong outdoor coverage does not reflect conditions indoors, where tradespeople often work in basements, plant rooms and large buildings.
Richard Skelson, managing director of Field Ascend, said: “London may have strong outdoor mobile coverage, but that rarely reflects the reality engineers face on the job.”
How the figures were worked out
Business counts came from the ONS UK Business: Activity, Size and Location 2025 dataset and Nomis UK Business Counts 2025, using VAT and PAYE based local units. Field Ascend’s “trades” is its own grouping of trade and field service industries by SIC code, which is not the same as the ONS construction sector. Coverage came from Ofcom’s Connected Nations update for spring 2026 and measures outdoor coverage by area, not indoor signal. More is in our companies section.