£20,075 Debt Recovered Through Strategic Trace & Recovery Action

The Insolvency Service will continue to release monthly company and individual insolvency statistics for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as monthly company statistics for Scotland, throughout the remainder of the coronavirus pandemic, and for a period thereafter.  

Caution is noted as these statistics are considered ‘experimental’ since the process of compiling insolvency data in a monthly format is new to the statistics team, and is subject to review. Furthermore, it is not possible to determine whether an insolvency is directly related to the coronavirus pandemic, and consequently it is not possible to state its direct effect on insolvency volumes.

In October 2021 the number of registered company insolvencies were similar to pre-pandemic levels. There was a total of 1,405 company insolvencies in England and Wales, which included:

• 1,248 creditors’ voluntary liquidations (CVLs)
• 46 compulsory liquidations
• 95 administrations
• 16 company voluntary arrangements (CVAs)
• 0 receiverships

Overall company insolvencies in October 2021 were 5 per cent lower when compared to October 2019 (pre-pandemic) but 63 per cent higher when compared to October 2020.

With regards to individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs), the numbers are as follows:

In October 2021, there were:

• 7,031 IVAs registered (using a three-month rolling average)
• 1,937 debt relief orders (DROs)
• 601 bankruptcies (518 debtor applications and 83 creditor petitions)

Debt Respite Scheme:

Between May (when the scheme was launched) and October 2021 there were 32,082 breathing space registrations. These were made up of:

31,651standard breathing space registrations

421 mental health breathing space registrations (for those receiving mental health crisis treatment)

In October 2021 there were 4,836 breathing space registrations. This included 4,755 (98.3%) standard breathing space registrations and 81 (1.7%) mental health breathing space registrations.