12 February 10
Personal Insolvencies In England And Wales Hit A Record High In Fourth Quarter Of 2009

The Insolvency Service statistics released on 5 February 2010 show a rise of 25% on the same period a year ago. 35,574 people were declared insolvent in the last three months of the year. 

Over 2009 as a whole, there were 134,142 individual insolvencies in England and Wales. This was higher than the previous record - in 2006 - of 107,288. This was made up of 74,670 bankruptcies – up 10.7% on the previous year, 47,641 Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) - up 21.8% and 11,831 Debt Relief Orders (DRO) - which were introduced in April. These new “DROs” allow people with relatively few assets and liabilities to write off the debts without a full-blown bankruptcy.

Corporate Insolvencies
 
2009 as a whole also saw a record number of companies being placed into liquidation with a total of 19,077 compulsory liquidations and creditors’ voluntary liquidations, a 22.8% increase on 2008. (This equates to approximately 1 in every 114 active companies). There were also 6,355 other corporate insolvencies in 2009, 1,468 receiverships, 4,161 administrations and 726 company voluntary arrangements (CVAs). However in the last quarter of 2009, the number of companies being liquidated actually fell compared with the previous quarter.
Some experts have suggested that there will be more pain to come despite the UK officially coming out of recession.
 
“It seems that whilst the economists tell us that the recession is technically behind us, companies and individuals are obviously still suffering from the financial fallout of the downturn”, said Jeanette Brown, Licensed Insolvency Practitioner at DoddRESCUE.

You can find out more about the team and the services that they can provide by logging onto our website www.doddrescue.co.uk.

To view the detailed statistics please click on the link below:-

http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/otherinformation/statistics/201002/index.htm