The UK Business Data Survey 2026 has discovered that British businesses use data, occasionally understand it and remain deeply uncomfortable with the idea of donating it to an artificial intelligence model. The data cube has been briefed and is already asking whether governance comes with a staff kitchen.
The survey covers businesses questioned between October 2025 and January 2026. It found that 86% handled digitised data, 41% of those businesses used artificial intelligence for at least one purpose and 73% would feel uncomfortable allowing their data to train external AI models. The remaining 27% presumably have either read the terms and conditions or employ someone whose professional duty is locating the terms and conditions.
Large businesses were more likely to use data in advanced ways, including analysis, sharing and several kinds of AI. This is encouraging news for the corporate world, which has spent years declaring that data is the new oil, then saving it in a spreadsheet called final final revised two.
Governance is still looking for its coat. Only 17% of businesses using AI reported having a policy or guidance on its use, and only 5% had a formal written policy. Among large businesses, the formal figure was 56%. The data cube has called this a promising start, although it wants to know whether do not paste customer secrets into the robot counts as the complete framework.
Awareness of AI regulatory guidance was mixed. More than half of AI users had heard of it, but among those aware of the guidance only 19% found it clear and easy to understand. The rest are waiting for a second document explaining the first document, followed by a compulsory session on finding the second document.
The report also examines cloud storage, international transfers, data protection and the uneven maturity of business technology. Its most revealing contradiction is not that companies use data. It is that the modern economy has developed an enormous vocabulary for handling information while still treating the question “where did this number come from?” as an act of workplace aggression.
The data cube has now submitted its governance policy. It is two pages long, contains no verbs and assigns responsibility to the relevant stakeholder. The stakeholder is laughing too, because the policy has somehow made them chair of the next meeting.
Source: GOV.UK.
