Wednesday 21st May 2008
Personal bankruptcies have decreased over the past year, according to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
Figures from the MoJ show a 13 per cent decline in debtors petitions, which represent individuals filing for bankruptcy.
In the first three months of 2008, 13,080 such petitions were filed by Britons at the high courts and county courts in England and Wales.
The MoJ advises those reading the information to "note that these figures represent court activity and not the actual numbers of individual or business insolvencies".
Meanwhile, the number of businesses becoming insolvent has also fallen by the slightly smaller proportion of ten per cent annually to the first quarter of 2008.
According to the MoJ, insolvency is determined as being when an individual or business reaches a level of debts which it is unable to deal with using the funds to which it has access.
The figures also reveal that a greater proportion of bankruptcy procedures are currently being instigated by the creditor, rather than the debtor.
With debtor petitions down by 13 per cent, a greater 15 per cent decline is witnessed in creditor petitions year-on-year.
Fewer than 3,000 requests for bankruptcy proceedings were instigated by those to whom debts were owed during the three-month period.
The news follows the publication of parallel statistics by the Insolvency Service which show that, on a seasonally adjusted basis, personal insolvencies have fallen by 13.2 per cent since the first quarter of 2007.
However, in the short term the situation is a little bleaker with insolvencies up by 1.7 per cent in the first three months of 2008 when compared with the previous quarter.
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