Mortgage News
Bankruptcy orders fall 27% in 12 months
The number of bankruptcies in Q1 2012 fell by over 27% compared with the previous year, according to The Insolvency Service.
The data showed there were 28,723 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2012. This was a decrease of 4.7% on the same period a year ago.
This was made up of 9,132 bankruptcies, down 27.2% on Q1 2011, 7,897 Debt Relief Orders (DROs) up 16.3% and 11,694 Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs), up 8.1% against Q1 2011.
Meanwhile, there were 4,303 company insolvencies in total in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2012. This was an increase of 0.2% on the previous quarter and an increase of 4.3% on the same period a year ago.
David Birne, an insolvency partner at the chartered accountants HW Fisher & Company, said: “The bulk of the really bad personal insolvencies went through the system quite a while back. The extreme cases fell like a pack of cards in the aftermath of the crash. What we’re seeing now is the marginally less severe cases enter into debt relief orders and individual voluntary arrangements.
“The fact that DROs and IVAs have both risen on the corresponding quarter of last year shows that there is going to be a long tail to the shock of 2008,” which will trouble the economy more than the initial shock in 2008, he added.
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“Mortgage lenders hiking their rates will only add to the pressure on incomes and we expect this to tip more people over the edge over the course of the next year.”
Separate research from Experian showed that the largest share of UK insolvencies continues to be from the Ex-Council Community classification – typically individuals living on council estates where a large number of residents have exercised their right to buy.
This group, which makes up 9.26% of the UK adult population, accounted for 14.6% of all insolvencies, a rise of 23 basis points compared to the same quarter last year.
Young professionals experienced the biggest drop in their share of personal insolvencies in the last 12 months.
The so-called ‘new homemakers’ group, typically young professionals who have recently bought a new home, saw its proportion of insolvencies decrease by 41 basis points to 5.39% in Q1 2012.
The young, professional and well educated demographic also experienced a fall in insolvencies, from 5.76% in Q1 2011 to 5.38% in Q1 2012.