North East businesses advised to seek professional help as insolvencies increase

The North East chair of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3, Alexandra Withers, advises business owners to keep a close eye on their festive finances.

This comes after the latest official figures showed another substantial year-on-year increase in the number of business insolvencies across England and Wales.

The Insolvency Service statistics show that there was also a 63.6 per cent year-on-year increase from the 864 cases of corporate insolvency registered in October last year up to the 1,405 cases lodged last month.

Despite the annual increase, the October figure represents a three per cent month-on-month fall from the 1,446 cases of corporate insolvencies reported in September.

Alexandra continued: “The run up to Christmas is often the busiest and best trading period of the year for operators in many different sectors, and with industries like hospitality, leisure and retail having been especially badly hit this year by pandemic restrictions, the race will be on to make up as much commercial ground as possible during the festive season.

“Issues like cashflow problems and an inability to pay supplier invoices on time could indicate deeper financial issues within a business that could threaten its future sustainability

“After all, if your suppliers lose patience with this sort of late payment and the impact it’s having on their own operations, you could easily find yourself without anything to sell.

Alexandra concluded: “Anyone who is concerned about their business finances should seek advice as soon as possible, so that they have the maximum number of potential options available to address their problems and enough time to make a decision about what the best one for them to take would be.”