News story

Insolvency Service beats targets

The Insolvency Service exceeded all our published targets last year, our annual report shows.

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government
Annual report cover

The agency’s annual report for 2013/14 was laid in Parliament today. Performance targets are set by the Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs and cover a range of efficiency measures including the timeliness of processes, customer satisfaction and stakeholder confidence.

Key results include:

  • Achieving 1,273 director disqualifications, with a six year average length of disqualification undertakings and orders
  • Winding up 168 companies in the public interest following investigations by the agency
  • Processing 75,387 redundancy claims
  • Achieving a 95.6% customer satisfaction rating
  • Increasing stakeholder confidence in the insolvency investigation and enforcement regime from 66% to 69%

Insolvency Service Chief Executive Dr Richard Judge said:

“Britain’s insolvency regime is consistently ranked in the World Bank’s top 10 giving confidence to investors that this is a good place to do business. In the past year the Insolvency Service has met and exceeded all of our published targets. We achieved over 1,200 director disqualifications with each having a net benefit to the economy of £100,000. Redundancy payments were processed ahead of target helping people to move on in what is usually a difficult time. Initiatives such as the launch of a new single Complaints Gateway and £30 million of annual process savings identified through the Red Tape Challenge demonstrate the value of working closely with our partners to build a more efficient and robust insolvency regime.

“Our successes have been achieved in a rapidly changing business environment which has seen total insolvencies fall by 25 per cent over the past four years with a consequent fall in fee revenue for the agency. Our programme to deliver a more efficient and customer focused agency is well advanced with significant progress to digitise redundancy payments, a rationalised office network and investment to upskill our people.”

Published 17 July 2014