UK insolvency tracker

What the composition tells you

The striking thing is not the total but the split. IVAs account for more than three-fifths of individual insolvencies, while bankruptcies — the oldest and in many cases the cheapest formal route — account for under 6%. Debt Relief Orders sit in between.

That composition is worth interrogating. A DRO costs nothing and lasts twelve months. Bankruptcy costs £680 and usually discharges in twelve months. An IVA runs five or six years with fees taken from every payment. There are entirely legitimate reasons someone chooses an IVA — protecting a home, protecting a professional position — but the ratio also reflects where the commercial marketing money is, and that is worth being aware of when you are being sold one.

Why the IVA series moves around

IVA numbers are recorded by the date they are registered with the Insolvency Service, not the date creditors agreed them, and there is often a lag between the two. That makes the monthly series genuinely volatile and means individual months should be read with care. The December 2025 spike, for example, reflected a backlog being cleared rather than a surge in new arrangements.

How we use these figures

We reproduce the official statistics, cite the release, and date every page. We do not extrapolate national figures down to towns, because the Insolvency Service does not publish them at that level and inventing them would be worse than useless.