Administrations up a fifth on last year as liquidations fall 8%
Over the same 120 days of the year, The Gazette published 21% more administration appointments than in 2025, while creditors' voluntary liquidations and court winding-up orders both fell by 8%.
By Financial Pages
Between 25 May and 21 September 2026, The Gazette published 620 notices of administrators being appointed to UK companies. Over the same 120 days of 2025 it published 513, so the count is up by 21%.
Over the same days, the procedures that close a company fell. Creditors’ voluntary liquidations, where an insolvent company’s directors and creditors put it into liquidation, produced 6,032 notices of liquidators being appointed, against 6,539 a year earlier. That’s a fall of 8%. Winding-up orders made by the courts fell by the same proportion, from 1,298 to 1,188. Petitions asking a court to wind a company up went the other way, rising 5% from 2,222 to 2,329.
| Gazette notices, 25 May to 21 September | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointment of administrators | 513 | 620 | +21% |
| Winding-up petitions | 2,222 | 2,329 | +5% |
| Liquidators appointed in a creditors’ voluntary liquidation | 6,539 | 6,032 | −8% |
| Winding-up orders | 1,298 | 1,188 | −8% |
What administration is for
An administrator is appointed with a set order of aims. The Insolvency Act 1986 puts “rescuing the company as a going concern” first. Next comes achieving a better result for creditors than an immediate winding-up would, and last, realising property to pay secured or preferential creditors. A liquidation has no rescue aim: it ends the company.
More administrations alongside fewer liquidations fits more companies being put into the procedure whose first aim is rescue. The notices can’t show how those administrations end, though. A rescue, a sale of the business and a later liquidation all start with the same appointment notice.
Most of the rise came in June. The Gazette carried 215 administration notices that month, against 116 in June 2025. July was close to last year (156 against 164), August was slightly higher (144 against 128), and the first 21 days of September were slightly lower (79 against 88).
Which businesses
Companies House records up to four Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes for each company, and the codes point to different kinds of business in each procedure.
Among companies with a liquidator appointed in a creditors’ voluntary liquidation, the most common code is licensed restaurants, on 339 of the 5,714 companies with a Companies House profile. Public houses and bars (210) and take-away food shops and mobile food stands (184) come third and fourth, behind other business support services (271).
In administrations, the two most common codes are both property codes: buying and selling of own real estate (40 of 442 companies) and other letting and operating of own or leased real estate (35). Among the court’s winding-up orders, the building trades lead, with development of building projects and construction of domestic buildings on 69 companies each out of 1,141.
London is the registered office of more of these companies than anywhere else, in administrations and in creditors’ voluntary liquidations alike: 115 of the 442 profiled administrations and 726 of the 5,714 profiled liquidations. Manchester comes second in both.
How these figures were counted
These are counts of notices published in The Gazette’s corporate insolvency category, by notice type, over 25 May to 21 September in each year. They aren’t the Insolvency Service’s official company insolvency statistics, which count registered insolvencies and are published monthly, so the two sets of numbers won’t match.
- Solvent liquidations are left out. The Gazette files members’ voluntary liquidations, where a solvent company is closed by its owners, in the same category. They aren’t insolvencies, so they’re excluded here.
- Notices, not companies. A company can appear in more than one notice. The appointment notices counted here run close to one per company: the 620 administration notices named 613 companies.
- Sector codes come from each company’s Companies House profile. Those profiles are held for 442 of the 613 companies in administration and 5,714 of the 6,017 in creditors’ voluntary liquidation. A company with several codes is counted under each of them.
Contains data from The Gazette, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.