You asked us

"The Credit Action Debt Statistics were published on 3rd October. Any thoughts?" 

I have touched on these figures above. Whilst there are some encouraging signs, such as the total amount of credit card debt continues to fall and outstanding unsecured consumer credit was down £9bn at £156bn on the previous year, there are still causes for concern. 

Every 15 min 30 sec a property is repossessed and every 4 min 49 sec someone will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. 904,000 people had been unemployed for over a year between May and July 2012 and total outstanding personal debt stood at £1.412 trillion at the end of August which is up from £1.407 trillion last year. These are depressing figures. 

Clearly as a country we have some way to go to get out of this gloom and reach growth as suggested by Ernst and Young. There are still some tough times ahead. 

You asked us.........

"I believe that your work is typically debt related, are all of your clients in the finance sector?"

Most of our work is indeed from the finance sector (and the associated legal providers to that industry) but we have a broad range of clients both in finance and outside of it. Because we offer a range of investigative services we are used by a number of clients across a range of industries. Without being specific, examples of our client base would be:

• Banks, Building Societies, Finance Houses
• Solicitors - Litigation, Debt Recovery, Family, Employment
• Insolvency Practitioners, Accountants
• Local Authorities
• Fee paying schools, Universities
• Housing Associations 
• Government Agencies
• Insurance Companies
• SME's as well as Large Corporates
• Breweries
• Credit Unions

To name but a few! 

What's in a number?

In Milton Keynes we are all agreed that it is a city of continued growth with a "can do" attitude where we buck the national trend in the current economic climate - but do we?

I have recently seen figures produced by The Insolvency Service (thank you Peter Windatt at BRI for the details) which cover the period 2000-2009. These show, for instance, that in MK (per 10,000 population) the rate of bankruptcies increased from 5.3 to 17.3, the total individual insolvencies increased from 7.2 to 31.1 and I could go on. The surprising figure for me is that the Milton Keynes average for bankruptcy orders was 21.2 per 10,000. The average for the rest of England & Wales was 17.3. It seems we are not immune.