Last week Companies House, who, like so many other Government bodies, have begun to use social media to communicate with their public, tweeted some interesting figures. Specifically that in the fortnight up to 21/8/11 they incorporated 25,379 new companies, and dissolved 14,137. These figures are interesting for a few reasons.
In their Annual Report for the financial year 2010/2011 (PDF link) Companies House announced they formed a grand total of 400,555 companies. This works out to a weekly average of 7703. The new figures show a weekly average of 12,690, an increase of around 65%.
Likewise, in FY 2010/2011, Companies House dissolved 348,790 companies, averaging out at 6,708. The new figures show a weekly average of 7087 – an increase of around 5%. While the increase in liquidations is certainly not good news, the ratio of companies formed to companies closed has fallen from 1 : 0.87 to 1 : 0.56 – a massive step in the right direction
Bear in mind these figures are only a two-week snapshot of Companies House activities, and the totals for the Financial Year 2011/2012 may be very different – however it is encouraging to see that more companies are being formed, and proportionally less companies are failing or being wound up.
