7OCT

Company failures ease to one in 199

2 min read

12:52UTC

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 £8.1bn over forecast, and the 30-year at 6%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 →

Causes and effects

This Event

Company failures ease to one in 199

Corporate Britain sits well clear of the 60.0 trigger declared on this ledger, and the corporate register is moving in the opposite direction to the household one.

Led to

Bankruptcies up 14% in England and Wales

The company insolvency rate slipped to 50.1 from 50.3 even as administrations rose 60%.

Occurred 18 Sept 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Conservative Party

Leader Kemi Badenoch said Labour will run out of money and proposed lifting defence to 3% of GDP, paid for from welfare. Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately put those savings at £23bn, "just the start".

Reform UK

Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick pledged £80bn a year of spending cuts by the end of the next parliament and claimed £30bn a year of interest savings. The Spectator judged that the sums still do not fully add up.

Centre for Policy Studies

The right-of-centre think tank argued on 4 October that Britain is not a low-tax country once workplace pensions and student-loan repayments are counted. Its comparison rests on 2019 data.

Institute of Economic Affairs

The free-market think tank argued on 28 September that alcohol, tobacco and landfill duties raised £5.2bn less than the OBR projected. That comparison is separate from the five-month borrowing overshoot.

Resolution Foundation

The centre-left think tank said on 8 September that about £1 in every £12 of public spending now goes on debt interest. In July it put headroom against the fiscal rules at about £10bn.

Audit Scotland

It reported on 17 September that three Scottish budgets planned ScotWind drawdowns and drew nothing each time. It warned that using one-off receipts to balance annual budgets can weaken spending control.