UK Business Distress Nowcast

The UK Business Distress Nowcast is our composite read of how much financial pressure UK companies are under right now, built by combining several official data sources into one picture rather than leaving them scattered across separate government releases. It draws on company insolvency volumes from the Insolvency Service, winding-up petition activity from The Gazette, company tax debt from HMRC, director disqualification enforcement from the Insolvency Service and Companies House, and Bounce Back Loan repayment data from the British Business Bank. The point of bringing them together is that distress shows up in these signals before it shows up in the headline insolvency count: petitions, tax arrears and enforcement move first. Each component below is a standalone tracker with its own source and update cadence, and together they form the Director Distress Index that sits behind this page. Everything is sourced and free to cite. Insolvency Service; The Gazette; HMRC; Companies House

Flagship data asset

The trackers behind the Nowcast

How we build it

The Director Distress Index weights each official signal by how early and how reliably it indicates distress, with creditor enforcement such as winding-up petitions and HMRC tax debt leading the formal insolvency count. Every figure is tied to a named UK source, with the methodology and update cadence shown on each tracker page. We never invent numbers. Where a figure is the most recent published series rather than a live feed, we say so and link to the source.