FOI release

FOI22/23-109 - Breathing Space data by age and type

Published 20 January 2023

Our ref: FOI22/23-109

1. Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your email of 06 December in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

1) For all Debt Respite Scheme applications the Insolvency Service has received from 1st January 2021 until the latest available data, please could you provide a breakdown of these applications by:

a. age

b. the type of debt they owe (e.g. utility bills/credit cards/personal loans)

c. the type of organisation which has referred them for the application

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, and I have provided answers to your questions below:

I have provided the relevant info/detail for each element of the FOI below:

1.a          Debt Respite Scheme applications the Insolvency Service has received from 1st January 2021 until the latest available data by AGE:

This information is available from the following publication, Breathing Spaces by Location, Age and Money Advisor Organisation, 4 May 2021 to 30 April 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). It is our intention is to publish Breathing Space numbers in the next Individual Insolvencies by Location, Age and Gender statistics on/around the end of March 2023.

Section 22(1) of the FOIA states that information is exempt if:

• The information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not).

The agency is therefore not obliged to provide this information at this time.

1.b Debt Respite Scheme applications the Insolvency Service has received from 1st January 2021 until the latest available data by the type of debt they owe (e.g. utility bills/credit cards/personal loans):

While the Breathing Space portal allows money advice organisations to provide information on the type of debt, this is a non-mandatory, free text field that is not subject to classification or validation. An exploration of the currently held data suggests that 41% of debts are described as “debt”, 8% are described as “Other” and further 14% have no information at all.  There are over 500 specific types of debt that have been recorded on the system for the remaining 37% of debts.      

1.c Debt Respite Scheme applications the Insolvency Service has received from 1st January 2021 until the latest available data by the type of organisation which has referred them for the application

The “type” of organisation referring the individual to the scheme, such as if it is a charity or local authority, is not captured as part of our data and therefore the agency does not hold this information.

However, under section 16 - help and assistance, we have provided you with the attached excel doc ‘BS FOI 109 - Annex A’, which includes the names of all organisations who registered with breathing space.

Counts have been rounded to the nearest five. Counts of one or two have been suppressed to protect the confidentiality of individuals and Citizen Advice Bureaux have been shown individually as per the working structure of the organisation.

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 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.

Kind regards

Information Rights Team

The Insolvency Service