The upward trend was driven partly by new Debt Relief Orders, introduced in April last year, which allow indebted people with few assets to write off the debts without going into full-blown bankruptcy.

For the whole of 2009 there were 134,142 individual insolvencies in England and Wales, which comfortably beat the previous record of 107,288, set in 2006.
 
The 35,574 insolvencies recorded in Q4 were made up of 17,007 bankruptcies (down 5.5% on the same quarter of 2008); 13,219 Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs, up 26.3%), and 5,348 of the new Debt Relief Orders.
 
"We expect to see the numbers continue to rise, as the upwards trend in personal insolvencies traditionally continues for nearly three years after the worst of a recession has passed," said Pat Boyden, of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Far fewer companies went out of business (receiverships, administrations and company voluntary arrangements) in the last quarter of 2009, with a reduction of 7% to 1,465, compared with the previous quarter.
 
Even so, 2009 as a whole still saw a record number of companies being declared insolvent: a total of 6,355, or 1% more than in 2008.
 
The number of companies liquidated - the last stage of the insolvency process - fell by 2% in Q4 2009, to 4,566 – which was also 1% down on a year earlier.

But for the whole of 2009, the number of companies liquidated increased to a record 19,077, 23% more than in the previous year.

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