FOI release

FOI 79 - Bankruptcies of retail businesses by region 16/03/20 – 01/09/21

Updated 2 February 2022

Our ref: FOI21/22-079

Date: 20 October 2021

Dear

1. Re: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request

Thank you for your email of 22nd September 2021 in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act. Could you please provide me with the following data:

The number of retail businesses that have filed for bankruptcy from 16/03/2020 to 01/09/2021 in each of the following regions:

• London
• Birmingham
• Liverpool
• Nottingham
• Sheffield
• Bristol
• Glasgow
• Leicester
• Edinburgh
• Leeds
• Cardiff
• Manchester
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Coventry
• Sunderland
• Birkenhead
• Islington
• Reading
• Kingston upon Hull
• Preston
• Newport
• Swansea
• Bradford
• Southend-on-Sea
• Belfast
• Derby
• Plymouth
• Luton
• Wolverhampton
• City of Westminster
• Southampton
• Blackpool
• Milton Keynes
• Bexley
• Northampton
• Archway
• Norwich
• Dudley
• Aberdeen
• Portsmouth
• Newcastle upon Tyne
• Sutton
• Swindon
• Crawley
• Ipswich
• Wigan
• Croydon
• Walsall
• Mansfield
• Oxford

In addition, your email of 30th September:

“This one seems like the most relevant option here: SIC code 47 “Retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles”.

We are looking at all areas of retail that have filed for bankruptcy for this study across the UK.”

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

I can confirm that the agency holds most of the information that you have requested. We have compiled a summary table to answer to your request using the data held that covers the period 16 March 2020 to 1 September 2021, attached at Annex A. Note that information for Birkenhead and Archway are not held as these are not local authorities. However, I have also provided the number of retail insolvencies in Wirral, the local authority for Birkenhead. The local authority for Archway (Islington) was already included in the requested list. Though please note that the information provided should be considered an 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 at Annex A.

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. For these cases, the information provided in this letter may not accurately reflect the location of the company’s registered office. For example, companies previously registered in any of the listed locations that were re-registered to an office-holder’s address outside of these locations will have been excluded. Conversely, companies with a previous registered address outside of the locations of interest may be included if the office-holder address falls within one of the locations.

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

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: https://www.ons.gov.uk/.

Legislation relating to company insolvency in Scotland is devolved. The Accountant in Bankruptcy, Scotland’s Insolvency Service, administers company insolvency in Scotland. Company insolvency in Northern Ireland is governed by separate, though broadly similar, legislation to England and Wales.

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.

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.

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.

Companies are assigned to a sector (or industry) in line with the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007) of economic activities at 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.

Between 16 March 2020 and 1 September 2021, 99 registered company insolvencies had unknown SIC codes. Therefore, the numbers presented in this response may be an undercount of the number of insolvencies in the retail industry.

Company insolvencies in England and Wales, and Scotland do not align with the underlying data used to publish the Industry tables in the Q2 (April to July) 2021 Quarterly statistics. Any subsequent updates to the underlying data may result in the information in this response not aligning with future releases.

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.

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