UK SIC 2007 · 84220
Defence activities (SIC code 84220)
Defence activities is UK SIC code 84220. It sits in division 84 (Public administration and defence; compulsory social security) of the SIC 2007 list. On the August 2026 Companies House register, 941 active UK companies list 84220 among their SIC codes. 431 of them list it first.
It is odd to find public administration and defence on the companies register at all. Most public bodies are not registered companies. The entries that do appear use codes such as 84120, regulation of health, education and social services, and 84250, fire service activities. They tend to be arms-length bodies, community interest companies, outsourced providers, and private firms doing statutory-adjacent work such as fire safety training or inspection. Some are simply businesses that liked the sound of the description. Check entries here one by one.
Related SIC codes
84120, Regulation of health care, education, cultural and other social services, not incl. social security84250, Fire service activities84110, General public administration activities84240, Public order and safety activities84130, Regulation of and contribution to more efficient operation of businessesWho prospects SIC 84220 companies
Selling into this division is niche, but not pointless. Fire safety consultancies and training providers under 84250 buy certification, equipment and e-learning platforms. Accreditation bodies chase them in turn. Suppliers who sell to the public sector sometimes use these codes to find delivery partners or subcontractors that already hold public contracts. The population is small and mixed, so qualify by hand rather than sending volume. Read the filings and the website before you make contact. Treat community interest companies differently too. Their spending follows grants and procurement, not impulse.
Lead generation for commercial & B2B services →How to read SIC 84220
SIC 84220 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 84, are the division, public administration and defence; compulsory social security. Add the third and you have group 842; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section O, public administration and defence, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
More on how SIC 84220 is built
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 84220 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 84220 are London (237), Bristol (21), Salisbury (16), Camberley (13) and Weymouth (12). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 84220 as a filter
941 companies is 0.02 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 84220 6th most used of the 6 codes we track in division 84. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
More on filtering by SIC 84220
Only 431 of the 941 companies carrying 84220 put it first. The other 510, 54 per cent, list it behind another code, which usually means the business does more than one thing and files 84220 as a sideline. A search that matches the first code only will miss most of this population, so match on any of the four SIC positions and use a second filter to tighten it.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 25 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 32 per cent, so the remaining 68 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 84220 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 84220, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 941 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
SIC 84220 companies, as leads
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About SIC 84220
How many UK companies use SIC code 84220?
941 active UK companies list 84220 (Defence activities) among their registered SIC codes. Each company may register up to four. Of those, 431 put it first. The figures come from the August 2026 Companies House register snapshot, and count active companies only.
Why do private companies appear under public administration SIC codes?
SIC codes are self-selected and nobody gatekeeps them. Any director can pick a division 84 code at incorporation or on a confirmation statement (CS01). Some picks are deliberate, such as a fire risk assessment firm choosing 84250. Others are simple misreadings of the code description. Real government departments and most councils are not Companies House entities. So this division is mainly private and third-sector organisations.
Can a CIC or company limited by guarantee use these codes?
Yes. Community interest companies and companies limited by guarantee follow the same SIC rules as everyone else. That means up to 4 self-declared codes, set at incorporation and updated on the confirmation statement, with no approval step. Division 84 codes are common among CICs doing community safety, regulation-adjacent or public service work. Keep that in mind when you read what a registration here really means.
Find UK SIC 84220 companies
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