If you are in SEO industry you must remembered the days when a you get rankling just by getting listed in general web directories. Before the Google penguin era directory submission was common method of search engine industry to get links . I hope there may be more than 25000 web directories which were just selling links. But hammering this technique by penguin updates and in 2013 to 2015 most of such spam directories vanished /closed.
Niche directories always remain the preference of intelligent SEOs and Regional or niche directory submission still works. Now in 2016 most of the Internet marketing company prefer to get there website lisited on local business directories or yellow pages. They are not concerned with dofollow or nofollow links. The most important is local business citations.
Therefore the local citations or directory submission services are on top and there is huge demand for this. Google do also approve in our opinion. For UK You can visit UK Directory and England Business Directory
Read a Article on Directories which are still useful in SEO