FOI release

FOI22/23-139 - Insolvencies by construction SIC codes

Updated 30 May 2023

Our ref: FOI22/23-139

Date: 13 February 2023

Re: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request

Thank you for your email of 31 January in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“I would be grateful if you could provide me with the following information:

1. The number of new company insolvencies for SIC 41.20/2 ‘Construction of domestic buildings’, by quarter, from Q4 2019 to Q4 2022. Please provide the data for England & Wales and Scotland

2. The number of new company insolvencies for SIC 41.20/1 ‘Construction of commercial buildings’, by quarter, from Q4 2019 to Q4 2022. Please provide the data for England & Wales and Scotland

3. If possible, please provide the names of the insolvent companies, by quarter, for both construction of domestic and commercial buildings, in separate tables.

4. The number of new company insolvencies for SIC 56.10/1 ‘Licensed restaurants’ broken down by UK region E.g. London, South East, East Anglia, Wales, North East etc. I am looking for the number of registered companies insolvencies in SIC 56.10/1 by UK region over the last 16 quarters (including Q4 2022).”

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

I can confirm the agency holds the information that you have requested. I have provided four tables in Annex A. Quarters are calendar year quarters, such that numbers for Q1 include insolvencies registered between 1st January and 31st March. Table 1 shows the number of company insolvencies for SIC codes 41201 and 41202 (in the construction industry) in England & Wales, and Scotland, between 2019Q4 to the latest quarter 2022Q4. Tables 2 and 3 provides the names of the insolvent companies by quarter for SIC codes 41201 and 41202. Table 4 shows the number of company insolvencies for SIC code 56101, by UK region, between 2019Q1 and 2022Q4, although please note that this information should be considered as estimate.

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 and the accompanying table 4 at Annex A.

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 Insolvency Practitioner (IP), who acts as the office-holder in an insolvency proceeding. For these cases, the information provided in this letter may not accurately reflect the location of the company’s registered office.

Further details on the above caveats can be found under ‘Section 16 (Advice and Assistance)’.

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

Compulsory liquidations in England and Wales are sourced from a live administration system managed by the Insolvency Service. The registration date for these is the court order date. All other insolvency procedures are sourced from Companies House, with the registration date based on the date that an insolvency was registered at Companies House. 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.

Company insolvency in Northern Ireland is governed by separate, though broadly similar, legislation to England and Wales. Numbers of compulsory liquidations in Northern Ireland are sourced from Companies House. This contrasts with the numbers in the published Quarterly and Monthly insolvency statistics, which are sourced from the Department for the Economy. Therefore, comparisons between these numbers and those published may not be valid.

Industry breakdowns have been presented in line with the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007). Companies are assigned to a sector (or industry) at the time of registration at Companies House. However, a company may have changed its primary business since first registration, or the industry sector might be recorded as that of its holding company and appear under “activities of holding companies” within the Business. The industry SIC code for compulsory liquidations in England and Wales is recorded with SIC 2003 codes. To obtain SIC 2007 codes for these, companies are matched against the Companies House register where possible, and SIC data are drawn from this source. Where matching is not possible, the 2003 SIC code has been converted to a 2007 code using a ‘best match’ approach using weighted tables provided by the Office for National Statistics.

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 Insolvency Practitioner (IP), who acts as the office-holder in an insolvency proceeding. For these cases, the information provided in this letter may not accurately reflect the location of the company’s registered office. 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, 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. This also means that these statistics may not equal the numbers published in latest Quarterly and Monthly insolvency statistics.

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

Companies with multiple insolvency procedures are included multiple times to give a full record of all registered insolvencies. Administrations which have directly resulted in a creditors’ voluntary liquidation are included only as administrations. Similar information for administrations converting to a compulsory liquidation or to a company voluntary arrangement is not available so these are counted as both insolvency procedures.

These statistics may also not align with information published separately by Companies House, or with data extracted from the Gazette. Further information on why numbers may not align can be found in the Quarterly Statistics Methodology and Quality document.

Please note FOIA only applies to recorded information, it does not require public authorities to answer a question unless recorded information exists. Therefore, to answer a request FOIA does not oblige a public authority to create information if the requested information is not held.

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 Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you wish for them to investigate any complaint you may have regarding 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