Methodology and Quality Document - Individual insolvenices by Location, Age and Gender, England and Wales 2023
Published 26 March 2024
Applies to England and Wales
© Crown copyright 2024
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/individual-insolvencies-by-location-age-and-gender-england-and-wales-2023/methodology-and-quality-document-individual-insolvenices-by-location-age-and-gender-england-and-wales-2023
The annual statistics in this publication provide breakdowns of insolvency numbers and rates in England and Wales by type of insolvency, age, gender, region, county, local authority, ward, and parliamentary constituency. The publication also provides numbers and rates of breathing space numbers under the Debt Respite scheme broken down by location and age.
For general notes on individual insolvency statistics in England and Wales please see the quarterly Insolvency Statistics publication, which is the definitive source of the number of new cases each year in England and Wales, and the rate per 10,000 adults. The latest document can be found on the gov.uk website.
1. Methodology
1.1 Data sources for insolvencies
Individual insolvency data was sourced from the Insolvency Service case information system (ISCIS) in January 2024. Numbers of breathing spaces were extracted from the Breathing Space register, which is managed by the Insolvency Service, in February 2024.
The gender of the debtor is collected when they enter an insolvency procedure and is self-reported. The administrative system from which these statistics are derived allows the options ‘Male’, ‘Female’ and ‘Unknown’.
The date of birth of the debtor is collected on entry to an insolvency procedure and is used along with the date the insolvency procedure commenced to determine age for the purposes of these statistics.
Geographical boundary definitions are sourced from the Office for National Statistics and are based on Ordnance Survey data.
Population statistics are sourced from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publication Population Estimates for UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Breakdowns are included by age, gender, local authority, and parliamentary constituency, so they can be used as the denominator when calculating insolvency rates per 10,000 adults. At the time of publication, the ONS mid-year population estimates by local authority were not available for the latest year, so the mid-year population estimates for 2022 were used for 2023 instead. Numbers for the latest year are therefore marked as provisional and will be revised in the 2024 publication. Last year’s publication used mid-year population estimates for 2021 for 2022. Rates for 2022 have been revised in this publication using population estimates for 2022. For parliamentary constituencies, population estimates were not yet available for 2021 or 2022 as well as 2023, so rates of insolvency by parliamentary constituency are based on 2020 population estimates.
More information on the administrative systems used to compile the agency’s statistics can be found in the Statement of Administrative Sources.
1.2 Tabulating numbers of individual insolvencies
Bankruptcy and Debt Relief Order (DRO) data are tabulated by insolvency type and calendar year of order or agreement, along with age, gender and location as defined above under ‘Data Sources’. Individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) in England & Wales are counted within these statistics once they are registered with the Insolvency Service, and are reported by year of registration date. There is often a time lag between the date on which the IVA is accepted (known as the date of creditor agreement) and date of registration by licensed insolvency practitioners working for firms that specialise in this area. For some IVAs, the year in which they were registered may differ from the date of creditor agreement.
Postcode data are matched against the National Statistics Postcode Lookup, to determine the region, local authority, and parliamentary constituency of each individual. These data are then aggregated to produce counts of insolvencies in each geographical area. The National Statistics Postcode Lookup is derived from data from the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey.
Boundary changes
In 2023, the counties of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset were abolished and divided into four UAs, Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness, North Yorkshire and Somerset. These changes are reflected in this publication.
Parliamentary constituency numbers and rates in this publication relate to the boundaries in place before changes to parliamentary constituencies were implemented on 15 November 2023. Population estimates for the new boundaries were not available at the time of publication. Future editions of this publication will provide a time series for the new constituency boundaries.
2. Revisions
Numbers from previous years have been revised in these tables compared to the 2022 edition of the publication due to minor methodological changes to ensure that where a debtor has multiple postcodes, the postcode at the date of insolvency is used. These revisions are generally small, affecting only a few cases each year in a given local authority.
Rates for 2022 have been revised using ONS mid-year population estimates for 2022. The previous edition of these tables used mid-year estimates for 2021, as population estimates by local authority for 2022 were not yet available. These revisions do not affect the main messages of the statistics. The largest regional revision was in the North East, for which the 2022 insolvency rate was revised from 32.4 per 10,000 adults to 31.9 per 10,000. Where numbers have been revised, it is indicated in the ‘Revisions’ column. Updated single-year tables for 2022 have been published at Individual Insolvencies by Location, Age and Gender, 2022.
Population estimates for 2023 were not available as at the time of publication, so the 2022 mid-year population estimates were used to calculate insolvency rates for 2023. Therefore, the insolvency rates for the latest year are marked provisional and will be revised in next year’s edition of this publication based on updated population estimates. The documents for this edition will not be updated, except for the single-year tables on Location, Age and Gender, for which updated tables for insolvency rates (Tables 1b, 2b, 3b and 4b) will be provided at the time of the 2024 publication in March/April 2025.
3. Quality
This section provides information on the quality of these statistics, to enable users to judge whether the data are of sufficient quality for their intended use.
The section is structured to align with the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System for statistical outputs.
Relevance: The degree to which the statistical product meets user needs in both coverage and content.
The Insolvency Service has policy responsibility for individual insolvency in England and Wales only; the extent of the coverage of these statistics reflects this.
Individual insolvency figures at national (England and Wales) level are published quarterly by the Insolvency Service as a National Statistics release. The annual statistics in this publication provide breakdowns by region, county, unitary authority, local authority, ward, and parliamentary constituency; and by age and gender to local authority level.
Key users of insolvency statistics include the Insolvency Service itself, which has policy responsibility for insolvency in England & Wales and for the non-devolved areas within Scotland and Northern Ireland; other government departments; parliament; the insolvency profession; debt advice agencies; media organisations; academics; the financial sector; the business community and the general public. Insolvency statistics are typically widely reported in national, regional and specialist media on the day of release.
The insolvency statistics are the most comprehensive record of the number of individual insolvencies in the UK and their location. They include all formal types of insolvency procedure currently available.
The statistical production team welcomes feedback from users of these statistics (current contact details are provided on the front page of the latest release).
Accuracy and Reliability: Accuracy is the proximity between an estimate and the unknown true value. Reliability is the closeness of early estimations to subsequent estimated values.
All formal insolvency procedures entered into by an individual are required by law to be reported to the appropriate body, so Insolvency Service statistics should be a complete record of insolvency in England and Wales.
Checks are in place to identify and remove duplication of cases, to ensure that returns cover all reporting areas, and to check consistency within tables and between related tables.
Accuracy and completeness of geographic data
Individuals have been classified into geographic areas on the basis of the postcode supplied by the individual. As some postcodes supplied are missing or incomplete, or do not match the National Statistics Postcode Lookup, some individuals have not been matched to geographic areas. As shown in Table 1, in 2023 approximately three in every 1,000 cases remained unmatched.
Postcodes are assigned to areas using the centroid of the postcode area. As postcode boundaries are not contiguous with other geographic boundaries, these postcode boundaries could span several geographic boundaries.
It is possible an individual changed place of residence in order to cut costs and attempt to get out of financial difficulty. Where this failed and the individual was declared insolvent, it will be the address at the time of the insolvency which is recorded and used to classify the insolvent’s location, where this can be determined. Where more than one address has been provided and the address at the time of insolvency is not known, the first known postcode listed in our systems is used.
Table 1: Percentage of postcodes that were missing or unmatched
England and Wales, 2013 to 2023
| All | Bankruptcies | DROs | IVAs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 0.6% | 0.8% | 0.3% | 0.7% |
| 2014 | 0.6% | 0.8% | 0.2% | 0.7% |
| 2015 | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.3% | 1.1% |
| 2016 | 0.9% | 0.8% | 0.2% | 1.3% |
| 2017 | 0.3% | 0.8% | 0.3% | 0.1% |
| 2018 | 0.2% | 0.6% | 0.3% | 0.1% |
| 2019 | 0.2% | 0.5% | 0.3% | 0.1% |
| 2020 | 0.2% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| 2021 | 0.2% | 0.9% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| 2022 | 0.2% | 1.0% | 0.7% | 0.1% |
| 2013 | 0.3% | 0.8% | 0.5% | 0.1% |
Accuracy and completeness of age and gender data
Some records of individual insolvents have missing, incomplete or implausible data for either or both of date of birth and gender. These have been classified as ‘unknown’ in the relevant tables but included in the regional tables if the postcode matched the National Statistics Postcode Lookup.
Gender is self-reported by the debtor when they enter the insolvency procedure. The administrative system from which these statistics are derived allows the options ‘Male’, ‘Female’ and ‘Unknown’.
Timeliness and Punctuality: Timeliness refers to the elapsed time between publication and the period to which the data refer. Punctuality refers to the time lag between the actual and planned dates of publication.
The key statistics in this publication relate to the rate of individual insolvency per 10,000 adults, which is dependent on population estimates at local authority, county and unitary authority, and region level for the denominator in this calculation. The ONS released Population Estimates for UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, mid-2022 on 23 November 2023.
Prior to the 2021 publication, these statistics were published only after the release of the population estimates for the latest year. However, following discussion with the ONS, along with considering feedback and requests from users, we concluded that the benefits of providing timely information outweighed the small inaccuracies associated with the use of the previous year’s population estimates. Therefore, the population denominators for the latest year are derived from the ONS mid-year estimates from the previous year. The rates for the latest year are marked as provisional and will be revised when the next edition of this publication is released.
The publication schedule for these statistics, and all other Insolvency Service statistics, can be found on the UK National Statistics Publication Hub.
Comparability and Coherence: Comparability is the degree to which data can be compared over time and domain. Coherence is the degree to which data are derived from different sources or methods, but refer to the same topic, are similar.
The same data was used for this publication and the Q4 quarterly insolvency statistics. This means that the overall totals for England and Wales for individual insolvencies should match closely between this publication, the Q4 2023 monthly statistics, and the recently released Individual Voluntary Arrangements Outcomes and Providers 2023 statistics. Rates for 2023 may differ from the quarterly insolvency statistics, because different population estimates are used.
Changes to legislation over time may affect the time series statistics in this release. In particular:
- New monetary eligibility limits for Debt Relief Orders in England and Wales came into effect on 29 June 2021. This included the level of debt at which people can apply for a DRO being increased from £20,000 to £30,000, as well as other changes which can be found in the Glossary. More people are now able to access this form of debt solution as a result of these changes.
- In 2016, there was a change to the process for people making themselves bankrupt, which removed the courts from the process. Since 6 April 2016, applications must be submitted online via the central UK Government website, https://www.gov.uk/, to the adjudicator within the Insolvency Service.
- There was a change in the minimum debt a creditor must be owed to make someone bankrupt, which increased from £750 to £5,000 for petitions presented from 1 October 2015.
- In October 2015, the upper limit for qualifying debt for a DRO was raised from £15,000 to £20,000, and the asset limit was raised from £300 to £1,000.
Accessibility and Clarity: Accessibility is the ease with which users are able to access the data, also reflecting the format in which the data are available and the availability of supporting information. Clarity refers to the quality and sufficiency of metadata, illustrations and accompanying advice.
Insolvency Statistics are available free of charge to the end user on the GOV.UK website. They are released via the Publication Hub and they meet the standards required under the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
The accompanying data tables are formatted in line with current guidance for producers of official statistics to help improve the usability, accessibility and machine readability of spreadsheets. The Government Statistical Service are continuing to review this guidance and so the presentation of these statistics may change in the future.
Historical insolvency data are also published for the key series, on the National Archives website.
Views on the clarity of the publication are welcomed via the contact details on the cover page of this release.
Any enquiries regarding this document/publication should be sent to us at [email protected].