FOI release

FOI21/22-138 - Statistics for the personal and company insolvencies in Devon and Cornwall listed by type for 2021

Updated 14 July 2022

Our ref: FOI 21/22-138

Dear

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your email of 18 January 2022 in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“I’d be grateful if you would send me the latest complete statistics for the personal and company insolvencies in Devon and Cornwall listed by type for 2021.”

Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

I can confirm that the agency holds the information that you have requested.

For company insolvencies, I have compiled a summary table to answer to your request using the data held that covers the period Q1 to Q4 2021 (1 January to 31 December 2021).

Note that there are known accuracy issues with company address information held. Therefore, some caution needs to be taken when interpreting the information provided in this letter.

In some cases, company address information held by the Insolvency Service may be the registered address of the Insolvency Practitioner (IP), who acts as an office-holder in an insolvency proceeding. Therefore, the information provided in this letter may exclude companies previously registered in Devon and Cornwall that were re-registered to an insolvency practitioner’s address outside of the region. Conversely, companies with an office-holder address registered within Devon and Cornwall may be included where the company address was previously outside of the region.

Note that even where the data does accurately represent the registered address of a company, it may not necessarily reflect the location(s) of company activity or operation.

Further details on these and other caveats can be found under ‘Section 16 (Advice and Assistance)’ below.

Subject to these caveats, Table 1 provides a summary of the estimated numbers of companies that entered insolvency in 2021 with a registered address in Devon and Cornwall, by type. Cornwall and Devon consists of the unitary authorities of Cornwall and Plymouth, as well as the eight local authorities in Devon: East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon, North Devon, South Hams, Teignbridge, Torridge, West Devon.

Table 1: Estimated number of registered company insolvencies by type and calendar year quarter, where the company’s registered office was in Devon or Cornwall

2021, not seasonally-adjusted

	Quarter1	Quarter2	Quarter3	Quarter4
Administration	0	1	1	1
Compulsory Liquidation	2	3	5	4
Corporate Voluntary Arrangement	0	1	0	0
Creditors Voluntary Liquidation	30	32	37	39

Under section 16 of the Act (Advice and Assistance) you may find it useful to note:

Data on companies that have entered compulsory liquidation are sourced from the Insolvency Service administrative systems.

Companies House data are used as the source of reporting on all other company insolvencies (creditors’ voluntary liquidations, administrations, company voluntary arrangements and receivership appointments). Companies House carries out its statutory functions of maintaining the registry of corporate bodies that are regulated by the Companies Act 2006. Note that Companies House does not monitor all business types (e.g. sole traders) and for information on these and other business types you may wish to contact the Office of National Statistics.

Caveats to note when interpreting information provided in this letter

Company address information reflects the registered address filed at Companies House. In some cases, the company’s registered address is updated post-insolvency to that of the office-holder. If a company address is changed prior to Companies House notifying the Insolvency Service of an insolvency filing, the address held by the Insolvency Service will be incorrect as it will reflect the office-holder’s address, not the company address.

Insolvency Service data held for compulsory liquidations do not include address information, so data are linked on a quarterly basis with Companies House data to return these values. Datasets are linked using the Company Registered Number (CRN). In some cases (approximately 10% of compulsory liquidations in 2021), the CRN is unknown or has been manually entered incorrectly on to the Insolvency Service administrative system. Therefore, no link can be made between datasets for these cases, resulting in a potential undercount of companies with a registered address in the location(s) of interest that have entered into compulsory liquidation.

The Insolvency Service publishes quarterly company insolvency National Statistics on the gov.uk website. This quarterly series provides more granular summaries of company insolvencies by type. Company location information is not routinely published within this series since the accuracy of the company address information held by the Insolvency Service does not meet the National Statistics quality standards.

For personal insolvencies by type in Devon and Cornwall in 2021, I can confirm the agency holds the information that you have requested however, the information you have requested is exempt from disclosure under section 22(1) of the act and the information is therefore refused.

Section 22(1) Information is exempt information if:

a) The information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not),

b) The information was already held with a view to such publication at the time when the request for information was made, and

c) It is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph (a)

In applying this exemption, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

It is in the public interest for individual insolvency statistics by location to be published annually as Official Statistics. Therefore, while meeting the legal requirements of the FOIA, the Insolvency Service is also obliged under section 13 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 to continue to comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, and specifically, the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008. The latter requires the producers of official statistics to ensure that no indication of the substance of a statistical report is made public, or given to the media or any other party not recorded as eligible for access prior to publication.

The 2021 statistics for individual insolvency by location, age and gender, which will include the information you have requested, will be published on 1 April 2022.

If you are not satisfied with the response we have provided you and would like us to reconsider our decision by way of an internal review (IR), please contact our Information Rights Team at foi@insolvency.gov.uk or by post at:

Information Rights Team
The Insolvency Service
3rd Floor
Cannon House
18 Priory Queensway
Birmingham
B4 6FD
United Kingdom

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you wish for them to investigate any complaint you may have in regards to our handling of your request. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect an IR to have been completed in the first instance.

Yours sincerely,

Information Rights Team

The Insolvency Service

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Official receivers and the Adjudicator are Data Controllers in respect of personal data processed by the Insolvency Service. For the details about how personal data is processed by the agency, please see the full Insolvency Service Personal Information Charter here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/insolvency-service/about/personal-information-charter