How to determine the Nature of Business

API Question
#1

Hi

I have been investigating the REST APIs and am curious how to find the Nature of Business as shown when I query using the normal company search Web UI.

The Web UI shows the “Nature of business (SIC)” at the bottom of the “Overview” tab but the Company Profile REST API response doesn’t appear to include this?

Is this available somewhere?
Cheers

#2

Yes it does, documentation here https://developer.companieshouse.gov.uk/api/docs/company/company_number/companyProfile-resource.html
search for sic_codes

#3

Ah - thanks Mark. Sorted!

#4

Hi MarkWilliams- Thanks for resonse, i was going through the same issue, and found your reply , the link you shared is not getting opened- :page not found" can you please respond how do we get Nature of Business with SIC code.?
Thanks

#5

Try this one, it works for me:

https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources/companyprofile?v=latest

You can find this from the Public Data API reference.

If you want the textual version of the nature of business (SIC code) then you can look it up using the “enumeration mappings” - the constants.yml list has these.

#6

Thanks for your response, gone through the details you shared, but still curious how to get nature of Business details as it shows on UI like below.
0111 - Grow cereals & other crops
Current API response just gives SIC code number and not the textual part of it. appreciate if you can tell a way to get response like above.

Thanks

#7

How to get the text to look like the website? See my last line above. Once you have the code, look it up in the data as given in the “enumeration mappings” file that I have linked to. That gives the text. If you are not familiar with them I suggest reading up on the YAML file format (which is how companies house provides the “enumeration mappings”).

#8

Thank you so much for your response, I have created excel sheet from copying data from enumeration mapping source you suggested above, however, just wanted to check with you whether the SIC code and its Description remains constant or gets change based on any condition, also how frequently this mapping gets updated, whether change in description or addition of new SIC code.

We are using this excel sheet to retrieve SIC code description based on SIC code we get in API response from company search.

Thanks in Advance.

#9

Companies can change their SIC code at any time (e.g. if their business activities change).

I believe SIC codes may be added but existing ones are not likely to be renumbered. Companies House “enumeration mappings” are provided via a Github repository so you can see when / how many times this has changed.