Insolvency Service Annual Report and Accounts 2023-2024
Insolvency Service Annual Report and Accounts 2023-2024
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
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This year’s annual report showcases how we are taking steps to strengthen the insolvency regime to ensure it works effectively for all its stakeholders whilst at the same time continuing to provide excellent service for all our customers. This year, we increased our customer satisfaction score and achieved our target of 84%.
During 2023-24 our Official Receivers handled nearly 11,000 new insolvency cases, a significant increase from just over 9,000 in 2022-23. We returned nearly £60m to the economy through dividends returned to creditors, an increase of nearly £15m from the previous year. This has been enabled by successfully improving and streamlining the way our Official Receivers operate.
Our Redundancy Payments Service provides a vital service for people who are owed money due to the insolvency of their employer. This year we helped people who had lost their jobs due to no fault of their own by processing over 85,000 redundancy related payments in an average of less than 10 days, an improvement on last year of over 30%.
Our personal insolvency regime has its roots in the Victorian era and has evolved over time to become far more flexible, recognising the difficulties faced by those who cannot pay their debts as well as the rights of creditors. The successful Breathing Space scheme, launched in 2021, gives people in problem debt the right to legal protections from creditor action for up to 60 days. Last year we granted 89,351 applications including 1,388 for people in a mental health crisis. Recently announced changes make it easier for some of the most financially vulnerable people in England and Wales to obtain a Debt Relief Order, continuing our support for people in financial distress.
The importance of establishing the causes of financial failure is a core part of our work and our ongoing vital criminal and civil work to tackle financial wrongdoing helps deliver economic confidence. This year we have completed 87 criminal prosecutions, undertaken 139 live company investigations and disqualified 1,222 directors for misconduct, a return to pre-Covid levels.
The misconduct we investigate reflects modern challenges and new legislation. Our continued focus on Covid loan abuse led to 831 disqualification outcomes, 93 bankruptcy restrictions and 22 criminal prosecutions for offences in this area. It also enabled us to take steps to recover nearly £3m for the taxpayer.
Our new Anti Money Laundering Intelligence Cell, funded by the new Economic Crime Levy, was launched in February 2024. This work has already achieved significant success in disrupting organisations involved in money laundering, crypto scams and threats to UK financial and national security. We are also putting systems in place to investigate new offences to tackle economic crime and support economic growth introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. This new legislation has also provided us with a new fee funded income stream for our corporate investigation and enforcement activity, key to helping us achieve a sustainable funding model.
In July 2023 we successfully launched our directors’ information hub, to help directors understand their duties and avoid insolvency. This online collection of concise, bitesize information and animations guides directors through the lifecycle of a company to help them make the right decisions at the right times, which we will continue to update and improve. Since its launch there have been nearly 20,000 unique views and the monthly trend is upwards.
Making best use of technology means we will be able to serve our customers efficiently, effectively and in a way to suit them. We plan to digitalise more services and forms for our customers, making them easier to use and more accessible and secure. Over the course of the year, we have continued to develop a modern adaptable case management system that will generate significant efficiency savings. We have also put plans in place to equip our staff with new hardware to increase productivity and reliability.
Looking back at our rich history, the first Official Receiver was appointed in Birmingham in 1884 and papers from that time show that there were considerable discussions about the location and costs of office premises. Fast forward to 2024, and by the time it is completed, our Transforming Workplaces project will have moved our estate footprint from 22 sites throughout the country to 11 Regional Centres based around the best locations for our customers. Our centres will offer our people vibrant, modern workspaces where they can collaborate and engage with their colleagues. This year colleagues from our Edinburgh and Croydon offices moved into new offices and colleagues from our Reading, Blackpool and Birkenhead offices relocated to Regional Centres.
This foreword gives only a small snapshot of the diverse range of work the Agency undertakes. The full report offers an insight into our achievements against our annual plan for 2023-24. I am immensely proud of everything we have delivered. This is testament to the continued professionalism of our people as they provide first class services for our customers alongside delivering the significant levels of change required to ensure the Agency continues to fulfil its purpose in a changing world.
Dean Beale, Chief Executive