Family Business UK

Family Business UK is the United Kingdom's principal membership body for family-owned businesses. It was incorporated in 2001 as the Institute for Family Business and renamed in 2023, a change intended to move the organisation from an institute identity toward advocacy and campaigning. Two things sit at its centre. The first is policy: FBUK lobbies government on tax and business conditions affecting family firms, runs a Policy Summit and campaigns through Family Business Week. The second is peer community: membership is company-wide and family-wide, and members are sorted into six curated peer groups — Chairs, NextGen, NowGen, Family Council, Non-Family Executives and Policy — that meet privately by role rather than by geography. Alongside these run an annual conference, masterclasses, regional events and the Future Leaders Programme, a cohort programme for family members preparing to lead. Dues are published as an eight-band scale tied to three-year average turnover, from £550 for the smallest firms to £4,675 for those above £500m, all excluding VAT. FBUK is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.

How it works

A family business joins at the turnover band that matches its three-year average revenue, and that single subscription covers everyone in the family and the business. Members then opt into the communities relevant to their role — Chairs, NextGen, NowGen, Family Council, Non-Family Executives or Policy — which operate as private curated peer groups with their own events and working sessions. On top of that sit an annual conference, a policy summit, masterclasses, regional events and Family Business Week. The Future Leaders Programme runs as a separate cohort from March to September for family members moving into leadership.

Typical member

Members range from very large, long-established British family firms to first-generation businesses, across every sector. Membership is taken by the company or group and covers the whole family and the whole business: any shareholder, family member or employee, including non-family executives, non-executive directors and next-generation members, may take part in activities.

FBUK's most useful feature for a prospective member is its pricing: an eight-band published scale tied to turnover is rare in this sector, and it means a small family firm can join for £550 while a large one pays under £5,000. Coverage is broad rather than exclusive — there is no generation test, no wealth threshold and no invitation — so this is an industry body, not a selective network. The peer communities are the closest thing to forum-style value, but they are organised by role rather than as fixed confidential groups, and FBUK does not publish how they are facilitated or whether confidentiality is formalised. The rename is worth handling carefully in any directory: the Institute for Family Business name is still widely used, the old domain still appears in search results, and the legal change dates to April 2023 with the public relaunch in July 2023. Member numbers remain unpublished, so scale is hard to judge.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.