FOI release

FOI22/23-143 - Company insolvencies by geographical location

Updated 30 May 2023

Our ref: FOI 22/23-143

Date: 21 February 2023

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your email of 10 February 2023 in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“The number of companies insolvencies broken down by region including, London, South East, South West, West Midlands, East Midlands, East Anglia, North West, North East, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Please provide this data for January 2023, as well as a monthly breakdown for the last four years: 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.”

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.

The data has been provided at Annex A. Annex A contains a table of number of insolvencies in each UK region by month from January 2019 to January 2023.

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.

The information the agency holds is the address recorded on the Companies House register on the date the insolvency is registered with Companies House. This address is often the address of the insolvency practitioner (IP), who acts as an office-holder in an insolvency procedure, rather than the location of the company before it became insolvent

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.

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

Companies House data are used as the source of reporting on all company insolvencies except for compulsory liquidations in England & Wales. 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.

For compulsory liquidations in England & Wales, information from Insolvency Service administrative systems is used. Where possible, the company number is then matched with the Companies House register to add the postcode. Where matching is not possible, the company is counted in the ‘Unknown’ category in Annex A.

Caveats to note when interpreting information provided in this letter

As described above, company address information reflects the registered address filed at Companies House as at the insolvency date, which is often updated to that of the office holder in an insolvency rather than the location the company traded. Note that even where the data held does accurately represent the pre-insolvency registered address of a company, it may not necessarily reflect the location(s) of company activity or operation. For example, some companies may be registered at a central office, but operate in a number of different locations, or use virtual office services.

The Insolvency Service publishes monthly company insolvency Official Statistics on the gov.uk website. Totals in Annex A match the January 2023 edition of this publication, except for:

• Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland numbers do not match because information in Annex A is derived from Companies House, whereas in the monthly Official Statistics, information on compulsory liquidations from the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland is used.
• One company with an insolvency date in November 2021 is on the England & Wales register, but has a postcode in Scotland. This is because the company traded in England & Wales, but is now registered at the address of an Insolvency Practitioner in Scotland. This company is counted under England & Wales in the Official Statistics, but in Scotland in Annex A.

Company location information is not routinely published within the monthly Official Statistics series since the accuracy of the company address information held by the Insolvency Service does not meet the Official Statistics quality standards.

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