Consultation outcome

Consultation on Insolvency Service Official Statistics publications

Updated 28 July 2023

1. Introduction

The Insolvency Service aims to produce high-quality statistics that are trusted and meet the needs of a wide range of users. To help determine whether Insolvency Service Official Statistics continue to meet these needs, we gathered information through a user survey at the end of 2022. We have also reviewed web analytics and assessed ad-hoc queries received over the past three years. As a result, proposals for changes to the publications have been developed, as outlined below.

The Insolvency Service seeks views from users of our Official Statistics relating to these proposed changes. We also welcome feedback on any of our statistical publications at any time, even if it does not relate to the changes below.

2. Summary

We propose to make the following changes to Insolvency Service Official Statistics:

• Discontinue the monthly and annual Insolvency Service Enforcement Outcomes publications, and instead publish management information tables on a monthly basis.
• Combine monthly and quarterly Insolvency Statistics, maintaining the overall frequency as monthly, but providing additional detailed statistics on a quarterly basis.
• Improve the provision of statistics relating to individual insolvency, including increased focus on individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) and debt relief orders (DROs)
• Other methodology and content changes to Insolvency Statistics.

Any decisions about whether to change the content or frequency of official statistics will be informed by responses to this consultation.

3. How to respond

Comments should be sent to [email protected] by Friday 30 June 2023.

3.1 Confidentiality and data protection

Information provided in this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or release to other parties or to disclosure in accordance with the access to information regimes. These are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

If you want information that you provide, including personal data, to be treated as confidential, please be aware that under the FOIA there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence.

It would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information, we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not in itself be regarded as binding on the department.

We will summarise all responses and place this summary on GOV.UK. This summary will include a list of names or organisations that responded but not the names and addresses of individuals.

3.2 Quality assurance

This consultation has been carried out in accordance with the government’s consultation principles.

If you have any complaints about this process (as opposed to comments about the issues which are the subject of the call for evidence) please address these to:

[email protected]

4. Proposed changes

4.1 Discontinuing Insolvency Service Enforcement Outcomes Official Statistics

The Insolvency Service currently publishes monthly tables and annual commentary relating to the enforcement outcomes it achieves. These include director disqualifications, winding up orders in the public interest, bankruptcy and debt relief order restrictions, and criminal prosecutions.

The Insolvency Service proposes to discontinue these Official Statistics for three reasons:

• The information relates to The Insolvency Service’s activity only and does not provide complete coverage of all director disqualifications or court outcomes in Great Britain. For example, it includes only some disqualifications following a criminal conviction under Section 2 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, depending on whether the Insolvency Service was involved in the proceedings. It is therefore more appropriate for the information to be labelled as management information.
• According to web analytics and user feedback, this is the least-used Insolvency Service Official Statistics publication.
• Similar information is also published in the Insolvency Service’s Corporate Scorecard, which provides quarterly updates on the Insolvency Service’s performance.

The Insolvency Service would instead publish monthly management information on gov.uk, covering the number and average length of director disqualifications obtained by the Insolvency Service and bankruptcy restrictions, breakdowns by specific allegation types, and the number of disqualifications relating to live company investigations.

More detailed information on enforcement outcomes obtained by the Insolvency Service would also continue to be published on a quarterly basis in the Corporate Scorecard, including criminal convictions, and winding up orders in the public interest.

Question 1: Do you agree with the proposal to discontinue statistics on enforcement outcomes and replace them with management information tables? If not, please explain why.

4.2 Combining monthly and quarterly insolvency statistics

In May 2020, the Insolvency Service introduced monthly insolvency statistics in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was intended that these would be published only for the duration of the pandemic and a period thereafter, to give more timely indications of insolvency trends during a time of uncertainty and volatility. However, the publication continues to be used frequently and based on web analytics, media coverage and user feedback, it is likely that it is now the most-used Insolvency Service statistics publication. Therefore, we propose to continue publishing insolvency statistics on a monthly basis.

The Insolvency Service also publishes quarterly individual and company insolvency statistics, which are accredited as National Statistics by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). The quarterly statistics cover similar topics to the monthly statistics, but provide more detail, including rates of insolvency per 10,000 adults and 10,000 companies. They are also seasonally adjusted to allow for more accurate comparisons between different periods.

Currently, in January, April, July and October, monthly and quarterly statistics are both published, covering the same time period. We propose to cease publishing the quarterly statistics and instead include the additional information the quarterly statistics currently provided in the monthly insolvency statistics in these months. This additional information would be broken down by month where possible, with some exceptions such as insolvency rates, which are calculated over longer time periods.

The insolvency statistics in January, April, July and October would be published later in the month than the current monthly insolvency statistics publications. Publication dates would initially be towards the end of these months as is currently the case for the quarterly insolvency statistics. However, through increased automation and other process changes, we would aim to publish these earlier in the month in due course.

This would provide a monthly publication to replace the current quarterly National Statistics and we would seek OSR approval to maintain National Statistics designation. We would create as long a historical series of monthly statistics as is practicable, and would continue to provide a longer time series of quarterly statistics in column separated variables (CSV) format.

Subject to these proposals being implemented, we would also develop methods to seasonally adjust the monthly statistics to aid comparability over short time periods.

Question 2: Do you agree with the proposed change to combine monthly and quarterly statistics? If not, please explain why.

4.3 Improving the provision of information relating to individual insolvency

Our monthly and quarterly individual insolvency statistics publications currently have a greater focus on total individual insolvencies, and on bankruptcy, with limited information on debt relief orders (DROs) and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs). However, user feedback shows more interest in statistics in relation to IVAs and DROs. Currently, the Insolvency Service publishes statistics on IVA Outcomes and Providers and Individual Insolvencies by Location, Age and Gender, on an annual basis.

Our proposals are as follows:

IVAs

• Increase the frequency of IVA Outcomes and Providers tables from annual to quarterly
• Include information on IVA termination rates by provider in these quarterly tables
• Simplify the publication of monthly IVA statistics by removing the three-month rolling average calculation, as statistics are now less volatile than when the monthly statistics were introduced.
• Include monthly statistics to show IVAs by approval month, as well as by registration month. Statistics by approval month would be presented with a one-month lag.

DROs

• Publish statistics on DROs by approved intermediary on a quarterly basis

Bankruptcies

• Discontinue statistics relating to income payment orders and agreements for bankrupts.

Breathing Space

• Publish statistics on Breathing Space by money adviser group on a quarterly basis

While we have also received requests relating to further demographic breakdowns such as income, employment status and household type, the Insolvency Service does not hold reliable information required to provide this.

Question 3: Do you agree with the proposed changes to statistics on individual insolvency? If not, please explain why.

4.4 Other proposed methodology and content changes to insolvency statistics

In addition to the proposals set out above, the Insolvency Service proposes to implement the following changes:

• Replacing the liquidation rates currently published in the quarterly company insolvency statistics with corporate insolvency rates, so as to also include administrations and company voluntary arrangements, but omit creditors’ voluntary liquidations following administration.
• Reducing the number of tables showing industry breakdowns of company insolvency. We would continue to provide breakdowns for total company insolvency in England and Wales, as well as Scotland, but remove existing breakdowns by insolvency type. This would reduce the number of tables on company insolvency by industry from 21 to six. Users would be able to calculate their own statistics for specific types of insolvency and industry using the record-level data file of company insolvencies provided on a quarterly basis.
• Improving the machine readability of publication tables by use of a ‘notes’ column at the end of each publication table to indicate revisions in each row, rather than the current policy where revised statistics are marked with an [r] within the publication table. This has already been trialled in the Individual Insolvency by Location, Age and Gender, 2022 statistics.

In addition to these changes, the Insolvency Service will continue to engage with Companies House and other government departments to investigate the possibility of publishing further commonly requested information on company insolvency where we do not currently hold the required data, such as insolvency rates by industry sector and location.

Question 4: Do you agree with the proposed changes to methodology and content? If not, please explain why.

Question 5: Are there any significant issues with or gaps in the coverage of Insolvency Service Official Statistics which are not addressed in this consultation?

5. What happens next?

After the consultation closes on 30 June 2023, we will consider the responses we receive when determining whether to implement the proposed changes, modify them, or maintain the status quo.

The planned timeline is as follows:

30 June 2023 – Consultation closes

28 July 2023 – Response to consultation published

Throughout 2023-24 financial year – Implementation of any changes following the consultation response