Insolvency map of Britain: regional patterns

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The headline finding is a persistent geographic split in the official England and Wales series: the North East recorded the highest regional insolvency rate in 2025, at 33.8 per 10,000 adults, while London recorded the lowest, at 16.2. This is an England and Wales location study, not a UK-wide local map.

How the rate is measured

The Insolvency Service publishes the number of individual insolvencies per 10,000 adults over a 12-month period. The national England and Wales rate was 25.3 per 10,000 adults, or 1 in 395, in 2025, compared with 24.1 per 10,000, or 1 in 415, in 2024. A rate makes areas with different population sizes comparable; it does not state how many people in an area are in financial difficulty outside the recorded formal processes.

Highest and lowest regions

The same release states that every region’s 2025 rate was above its own 2020–2024 five-year average. That observation concerns rates, not a judgement about people or places. The source also says the pattern was broadly consistent with prior years: higher rates in parts of the North of England and lower rates in London boroughs.

Local authority extremes

The local-authority results provide a more granular view. Halton recorded 63.0 cases per 10,000 adults, or 1 in 159, the highest published local-authority rate. Kingston upon Hull recorded 55.3 and Blackpool 50.8. At the other end, Richmond upon Thames recorded 9.4 per 10,000 adults, or 1 in 1,067, the lowest published rate.

The word “highest” describes the published rate in that year. It does not identify the causes of the rate, and this release does not support a causal claim about local incomes, housing, demographics or debt products.

Parliamentary constituency extremes

The same official release gives constituency figures. Kingston upon Hull East had the highest rate, 64.9 per 10,000 adults (1 in 154). Sheffield Hallam had the lowest, 6.8 per 10,000 (1 in 1,475). Constituency boundaries and population bases are part of the official publication, so these values are presented as published rather than recalculated here.

Is the pattern changing?

The Insolvency Service says local-authority rates mostly rose by 0 to 3.5 per 10,000 compared with 2024. It also records the North East as highest and London as lowest across the historical periods described above. That supports a description of continuity in the broad pattern, not a claim that every individual locality followed the same path.

Scotland and Northern Ireland: an availability note

Scotland and Northern Ireland are not absent from insolvency statistics. They are reported through separate systems. Scotland’s AiB statistics include Scottish statutory debt solutions, but the cited England and Wales release does not provide a directly comparable Scottish local-authority/constituency rate series. Northern Ireland is also reported separately in the Insolvency Service monthly releases. For national context, see UK personal insolvency statistics and the England and Wales and Scotland sections.

Method

Dates covered. Calendar year 2025, published 27 March 2026.

Sources. The Insolvency Service’s “Individual insolvencies by location, age and gender, England and Wales 2025” release.

How this page was compiled. The page uses rates, ratios and rankings exactly as published. It does not estimate missing local values or construct a Britain-wide ranking. Every figure is linked to the publication that reports it. Figures from different national series have not been added together because the legal regimes, reporting frequency and definitions differ.

Scope and limits. The geographic scope is England and Wales. The title uses “Britain” in its everyday geographic sense, but the comparable map data shown are not a GB-wide dataset.

What the figures do and do not compare

The published 2025 national rate, 25.3 cases per 10,000 adults, gives a benchmark for the regional series. The North East figure of 33.8 is above that benchmark; London’s 16.2 is below it. The source’s published range for the remaining regions and Wales, 23.7 to 29.2, shows that the two extremes should not be treated as descriptions of every area in those regions.

Local authority and constituency figures are not interchangeable. Halton’s 63.0 per 10,000 is a local-authority rate, while Kingston upon Hull East’s 64.9 is a constituency rate. They use different geographic units. This study reports them side by side only to show the separately published extremes, not to build a combined ranking.

The source’s “1 in” figures are rounded public-facing expressions of the rate. For example, Halton’s 63.0 rate is expressed as 1 in 159, and Richmond upon Thames’s 9.4 rate as 1 in 1,067. They should be read as rate presentations rather than as a forecast that one named resident will become insolvent.

What can be said about change

The release states that every region had a 2025 rate above its 2020–2024 five-year average. It also says local-authority rates mostly rose between 0 and 3.5 per 10,000 from 2024. “Mostly” is the source’s broad description; it does not identify a uniform increase for every local authority in this article.

The long-run statements in the release are stronger for the regional extremes: North East highest in every year since 2008, and London lowest in every year since the series began in 2000. These are historical-series observations. The statistics do not by themselves identify why the pattern exists.

Using the source tables

The official release contains the complete local authority, constituency, age and gender tables. This page does not reproduce the full dataset or add omitted areas from memory. A reader looking for a particular area can use the official location release alongside the directory’s regions index. The latter is a directory navigation tool, not a statistical source.

Why this is a rate map rather than a count map

A larger local authority can record more insolvencies in absolute numbers without having a higher rate. The official release uses adults as the denominator and publishes the rate per 10,000 adults. That is why this study’s main comparisons use 33.8 for the North East, 16.2 for London, 63.0 for Halton and 9.4 for Richmond upon Thames, rather than raw local counts.

The rate also belongs to the reporting year. A 2025 rate is not a live measurement of an area in 2026, and it cannot tell whether an individual resident will enter a formal insolvency process. The national 2025 rate of 25.3 per 10,000 is included as a reference point, not an expected rate for every local authority.

The source contains demographic as well as geography material, but this study intentionally confines itself to the published regional, local-authority and constituency location results. It does not infer demographic explanations or recalculate any of the official ranks.

A note on terminology

“Individual insolvency” is the term used in the official location release. It covers the statutory categories defined by the Insolvency Service and is not a count of company insolvencies, mortgage arrears or informal creditor arrangements. This boundary explains why the map should be read alongside, rather than in place of, other economic data.

Date discipline

Each comparison on this page uses the reporting date printed by its linked source. The article does not project the figures forward from the published 2025 data, nor does it treat a later publication date as a later observation period. This preserves the source’s stated time boundary.

Boundaries and publication choices

The location release groups data by the geographic boundaries used by the Insolvency Service for its 2025 publication. A regional rate, a local-authority rate and a parliamentary-constituency rate are all valid published measures, but they refer to different maps. This page does not create a new “best” geography or use one level to overwrite another.

The official release is also the authority for the adult-population denominators that underpin the rate. This study does not substitute census, electoral-register or household-population measures. Keeping the published denominator matters because otherwise a locally recalculated rate could differ from the official table without reflecting a real change in cases.

A location result is descriptive. It does not reveal an individual’s income, health, home ownership, household structure, debt type, borrowing history or use of informal arrangements. Nor does it measure how well any area’s debt-advice or insolvency services operate. The official-statistics collection is the place to monitor later releases and methodological updates.

Talk to a regulated professional. The right route out of debt depends on your specific circumstances — income, assets, debts, dependents and where you live in the UK. A regulated insolvency practitioner or a debt-advice charity can review your position and set out the options that apply to you. Find a regulated practitioner near you or contact a free debt-advice charity listed above.

Frequently asked questions

Which region had the highest rate of personal insolvency?

The North East, at 33.8 per 10,000 adults in 2025.

Which had the lowest rate?

London, at 16.2 per 10,000 adults.

Which local authority had the highest rate?

Halton, at 63.0 per 10,000 adults.

Does Scotland publish comparable local figures in this series?

The cited England and Wales release does not. AiB publishes Scottish statistics separately.

This page is published by The Insolvency Directory for general information about UK personal insolvency and debt options. It is not financial, legal, tax or debt advice, and reading it does not create a client relationship. The information is a summary — the rules change and depend on your circumstances. For advice specific to you, contact a regulated debt-advice charity or an authorised insolvency practitioner. Last reviewed 2026-08-10.