20AUG

Company failures ease to one in 199

2 min read

17:53UTC

The Insolvency Service put the company insolvency rate at 50.3 per 10,000 companies over the year to 31 July, less than half the 113.1 reached in the 2008-09 recession.

← Back to Three household registers, three answers Jump to analysis ↓

EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

Company insolvencies fell to 50.3 per 10,000 over the year to July, well clear of the 60.0 trigger.

The Insolvency Service released its company figures on 18 August 2026 alongside the personal ones, recording a company insolvency rate of 50.3 per 10,000 companies over the year to 31 July, against 52.5 a year earlier⁠¹. The measure counts registered companies in England and Wales entering a formal insolvency procedure, expressed against the whole active company population rather than as a raw count. Using the rate matters because the number of registered companies keeps growing, which lifts the count even when the risk of any one company failing falls.

That equates to about one company in 199, against one in 198 on the June vintage of 50.5. The 113.1 peak of the 2008-09 recession sits more than twice as high, and this desk's declared trigger on the corporate ledger is 60.0, almost ten points above where the register now reads⁠².

Insolvency Service rates measure the share of the company stock entering a procedure over a year, so the rate can ease while particular sectors deteriorate underneath it. What the number establishes is narrower and still useful: the corporate ledger moved further from its trigger for a second consecutive release, in the same window and from the same publisher as the register covering individual people moved closer to its own.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

This is the company equivalent of the individual insolvency rate published in the same release: out of every 10,000 registered companies in England and Wales, how many entered a formal insolvency process, such as liquidation or administration, over the past year. 50.3 per 10,000 works out at roughly one company in 199. That is down from one in 190 a year earlier, and well below the one-in-88 rate reached during the 2008-09 recession.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The company insolvency rate reached 113.1 per 10,000 companies in the twelve months to mid-2009, the peak of the 2008-09 recession. At 50.3, the current rate is under half that peak.

Counter-parallel: The rate held below half the 2008-09 peak across the two releases tracked this year, running at 50.5 for the twelve months to June before this release's 50.3 for July, so no 2026 reading has approached the 113.1 figure.

The rate fell even though the underlying company population keeps changing, because the rate divides the rolling insolvency total by the number of active companies rather than reporting the raw count.

That distinction matters for reading this release against the individual insolvency figure published in the same collection: a rising company population can push the company rate down even in a period when the absolute number of company failures is flat or rising, so the rate and the count can tell different stories from the same underlying data.

Sources:Insolvency Service

Mentions:Insolvency Service →Wales →England →

First Reported In

Update #2 · Three household registers, three answers

Insolvency Service· 20 Aug 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

Institute for Fiscal Studies

The IFS puts about £25bn a year of the government's defence spending path still unfunded against plans announced so far, and separately relays the OBR's costing of the triple lock at £15.5bn a year by 2029-30, roughly triple its original £5.2bn projection. It presents both as fiscal arithmetic, not policy recommendation.

Resolution Foundation

The Resolution Foundation projects typical non-pensioner incomes rising 1.2% in 2026-27, and 4.7% for the poorer half of non-pensioner families, before frozen tax thresholds and rising council tax and housing costs erode those gains later in the decade. It reads the tax route out of Britain's debt position as one that falls unevenly on households rather than on the state.

Institute of Economic Affairs

The IEA argues total managed expenditure averaging 44.5% of GDP through the decade is unsustainable, and that holding spending growth to inflation until 2029-30 would improve the fiscal position by £40bn. This is a campaigning position from the free-market right, not a costed forecast like the OBR's.

Structural case for reading the fall as genuine improvement

The debt ratio fell, borrowing fell year-on-year in cash terms by £6.0bn over the financial year to date, and two gilt auctions cleared at bid-to-cover ratios of 3.39 and 3.58 times with no sign of buyers demanding a premium for risk. On that reading, the state of Britain's public finances has not deteriorated this fortnight.

Office for Students

OfS's November 2025 modelled scenario puts 45% of providers in deficit for 2025-26; its separate May 2026 annual report, counting what providers actually filed for the identical year, puts the figure at 36.6%. Neither publication reconciles the two for the reader.

Regulator of Social Housing

The RSH's Q1 survey of 195 landlords found cash interest cover falling to 59% and described recovery as "slower than previously forecast", while recording the same sector raising £4.3bn and lifting its twelve-month development forecast to £16.0bn, a three-year high.