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There was good news on the economy in the government’s quarterly insolvency figures for April to June, published recently. Fewer companies are going out of business than at any time since late 2007, and the total number of individuals who became insolvent was at the lowest level since the third quarter of 2005. The statistics cover England and Wales and show that a decrease in compulsory liquidations was the main dri

If you don’t work in the collections industry, you might be surprised to find out that you could be forced into bankruptcy for owing as little as £750. To be frank, forcing someone into formal bankruptcy, with all the legal red tape and consequences involved, is a path that fewer and fewer creditors have been taking since 2010. Much better to make an arrangement for payment by a debtor with a realistic plan that sati

In the collections industry, there’s always a balance to be struck between enabling creditors to receive the money due to them and helping debtors to get back on their own two feet. That’s a point made in an editor’s letter in CCR Magazine that suggests one obstacle to this is the cost to individuals of entering bankruptcy (remembering that companies in trouble go into liquidation, a different process). It followed n

It was only a matter of time before the TV cameras were trained once again on the collections industry, given the growth in personal debt. Last July we wrote in the blog about a BBC documentary recording the difficulties landlords have when tenants stop paying their rent or refuse to leave at the end of a lease. Now it’s the turn of Channel 5 with a documentary series called Can’t pay? We’ll take it away! Which is de

News from the Money Advice Service that nine million people in the UK are living with serious debt is just the latest statistic to capture the scale of the problem. According to a survey by the government-backed service, only 17% of these people have asked for the free advice that is readily available to help families manage their debt burden. No wonder, then, that increasing numbers have turned to payday lenders and

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is clearly intent on keeping interest rates at their current low of 0.5% for as long as possible. Waiting until unemployment drops below 7% may delay an increase until 2016 or, at the market-predicted earliest, the first quarter of 2015. That’s good news for house buyers and some reassurance to people using individual voluntary arrangements or debt management plans to