Company insolvency by industry: the deep tables

Construction had more company insolvencies than any other industry in England and Wales in the 12 months to August 2026: 3,866, 17% of cases where the industry is known. Construction, wholesale and retail (including motor repairs) and accommodation and food service together made up 46%. The single biggest group was restaurants and mobile food service activities, with 2,082 insolvencies. Counting is not the same as risk, though: measured against the number of businesses, accommodation and food service activities had the highest insolvency rate in 2025, 267.6 per 10,000 businesses against 115.9 overall. Insolvency Service, gov.uk

Data as of: counts for the 12 months to August 2026 (from September 2025), from the Insolvency Service release for August 2026, published 18 September 2026; rates for calendar year 2025, published 19 June 2026 · Sources: Company Insolvency Statistics, August 2026, Table 1c; Business insolvency demography, 2015 to 2025, Tables B1a and B1b · England and Wales.

All 21 industries, latest 12 months

Company insolvencies by SIC 2007 section, summed from the release's monthly figures for the 12 months to August 2026 and compared with the 12 months to August 2025. Shares are of the 22,566 cases with a known trading industry; 394 more were non-trading or dormant companies or had no SIC code recorded.

Among industries with at least 100 cases, insolvencies rose on the previous 12 months in real estate activities, human health and social work activities and financial and insurance activities. Insolvencies fell in 12 of the 15 industries of that size. The most recent month's compulsory liquidation figures are provisional and can be revised in the next release.

The 20 biggest divisions

One level down, the two-digit SIC divisions show where inside each industry the failures cluster.

The 20 biggest groups

The three-digit SIC groups are the most detailed level the release tables publish. This is where a restaurant is separated from a pub, or a housebuilder from an electrician.

Insolvency rates by industry, 2025

A large industry will always have a lot of insolvencies. The rate per 10,000 businesses shows which industries fail most often relative to their size. These figures come from a separate annual release that counts businesses rather than companies, so they are not directly comparable with the counts above.

Not shown because the release suppresses counts under 5: sections O, T and U, named in full in the first table. Small industries such as mining and quarrying can show high rates on very few cases.

Sector guides for directors: construction, hospitality, retail, manufacturing, professional services, transport and logistics, recruitment and care homes.

How these figures are measured

The counts come from the Insolvency Service's accredited official Company Insolvency Statistics, Table 1c, which gives the number of companies entering each insolvency procedure each month by the industry recorded for them. We add up the twelve monthly figures for each industry. Compulsory liquidations come from the Insolvency Service's own case system; the other procedures are cases registered at Companies House, which may not match the date a case actually started. Administrations that move straight into a CVL are counted once, as administrations. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. Our 12-month totals for the six industries the release commentary names match the commentary exactly.

The rates come from the separate business insolvency demography release, which matches insolvent companies to the ONS Inter-Departmental Business Register and divides by the number of active businesses in each industry at the start of the year. A business with several insolvent companies counts once, and the industry is the one held on the business register, which the ONS takes from its own surveys and from Companies House, VAT and PAYE records. This page reports the published statistics and is general information, not advice.