The Insolvency Service has released the statistics on insolvency levels for 2009. On the personal side the figures (pictured) show that there were 134,142 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in 2009. The Insolvency Service note that this equates to approximately 1 in every 320 adults (or 0.31%). This is an increase of 25.9% from 2008, where there was approximately 1 insolvency in every 400 adults (or 0.25%).
The statistics have attracted a fair amount of press attention and well as practitioner comment. The Financial Times, The Times, The Guardian, and the BBC, have all reported on the issue. The best headline prize goes to the Mirror for their story entitled, "367 a day go bust as bankruptcies hit record high."
On the practitioner side R3 President Peter Sargent noted, “Even these record personal insolvencies are just the tip of a very worrying personal debt iceberg. What lies below the waterline is a much larger group who are sadly not facing up to their debt problems.”
Picture Credit: http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/otherinformation/statistics/201002/index.htm
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