FOI release

FOI 128: Figures for Wales construction insolvencies between 2018 - present

Updated 15 February 2021

Our ref: FOI20/21-128

Date: 1 December 2020

Dear ,

1. Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your email of 6th November in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“I am looking to ascertain figures for only Wales Construction insolvencies between the period of 2018-present.”

Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

I can confirm the agency holds the information that you have requested. However, some caution needs to be taken when interpreting this information.

  • Companies are assigned to a sector (or industry) in line with the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007) of economic activities1 at time of registration at Companies House. However, a company may have changed its primary business since first registration, or the industry sector might be recorded as that of its holding company and appear under “activities of holding companies” within the Business. The accuracy of this response relies on the coverage and accuracy of corporate bodies having been recorded with a SIC code under section F (Construction) of the SIC 2007.

  • In many cases the company’s registered address may have been changed to that of the Insolvency Practitioner (IP) or that of the IP firm administrating the insolvency. Therefore, the data may not include companies that had previously been registered with a Welsh postcode but have been re-registered to a postcode outside of Wales by the IP. Similarly, it may include companies that were registered outside of Wales but were re-registered to an IP address with a Welsh postcode.

1 Standard industrial classification of economic activities: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standard-industrial-classification-of-economic-activities-sic

  • Even where postcodes registered with Companies House represent the registered address of a company, it may not necessarily correspond with where the activity of company was carried out. Therefore, there may be companies registered with a Welsh postcode that carry out their business activities outside of that postcode. Conversely, there may be companies with an address registered outside of Wales that carry out their business activities within the Welsh postcode area. The latter will be excluded.

  • Compulsory liquidation data are sourced from the Insolvency Service’s in-house case management system (whilst all other company insolvencies are sourced directly from Companies House). This in-house dataset does not include postcode and industry information, so data were linked with Companies House data to return these values. Datasets were linked using the Company Registered Number (CRN). The CRN is entered manually on to the case management system and in some cases the CRN was unknown or incorrectly inputted. Therefore, no link could be made between datasets for these cases, resulting in a potential undercount of companies in Wales that have entered into compulsory liquidation.

Given the above caveats, please find a summary of the estimated numbers of company insolvencies in the construction industry in Wales, since 2018 to the end of Q3 2020.

2. Table 1: Estimated numbers of new company insolvencies in the construction industry in Wales

Q1 2018 to Q3 2020, Not seasonally-adjusted

Section Division Total 2018 Q1 2018 Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2019 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Q3 2019 Q4 2020 Q1P 2020 Q2P 2020 Q3P  
F CONSTRUCTION 220 15 23 25 31 22 25 26 15 16 14 8  
  41 Construction of Buildings 70 2 6 9 9 8 6 10 6 6 5 3  
  42 Civil engineering 18 1 3 2 2 2 2 0 0 3 2 1  
  43 Specialised construction activities 132 12 14 14 20 12 17 16 9 7 7 4  

Sources: Companies House; Insolvency Service

p Figures for the latest four quarters are provisional

If you are not satisfied with the response we have provided you and would like us to reconsider our decision by way of an internal review (IR), please contact our Information Governance team at [email protected] or by post at:

Freedom of Information and Data Protection Act team

The Insolvency Service

3rd Floor

Cannon House

18 Priory Queensway

Birmingham

B4 6FD

United Kingdom

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you wish for them to investigate any complaint you may have regarding our handling of your request.

However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect an IR to have been completed in the first instance.

Kind regards

Statistics

Insolvency Service

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Official receivers and the Adjudicator are Data Controllers in respect of personal data processed by the Insolvency Service. For the details about how personal data is processed by the agency, please see the full Insolvency Service Personal Information Charter here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/insolvency-service/about/personal-information-charter