UK company insolvency statistics March 2026: what procurement teams should watch
The Insolvency Service published its March 2026 figures in mid-April, and the headline number deserves a closer look before anyone draws the wrong conclusion. There were 2,022 registered company insolvencies in England and Wales in March 2026, 7% higher than February's 1,895 and broadly in line with March 2025's 1,995. At first glance, that looks like a trend reversal after a quieter start to the year. In practice, the picture is more nuanced, and for procurement and finance teams assessing supplier risk, the sectoral detail matters far more than the monthly headline.
What actually drove the March spike
Monthly insolvency numbers between November 2025 and February 2026 were lower than levels typically seen between 2022 and 2025. March 2026 saw a 7% increase, returning to roughly the 2025 average level, and the increase was mostly driven by more than 100 connected companies in the real estate sector entering administration.
There were 235 administrations in March 2026, 52% higher than in February 2026, 82% higher than in March 2025, and 89% higher than the 2025 monthly average. The Insolvency Service's own commentary notes this increase may be a one-off event rather than a reflection of the underlying trend in administration numbers. In other words, strip out that cluster of connected real estate failures and the month looks rather less alarming. The remaining breakdown consisted of 299 compulsory liquidations, 1,468 CVLs, and 20 company voluntary arrangements (CVAs).
That said, a one-off cluster of more than 100 connected companies entering administration in a single month is exactly the kind of event that can catch suppliers, landlords, and counterparties off guard. If any of those entities sat in your supply chain, the notification from an administrator would have arrived after the fact.
The sectors your supplier watchlist should reflect
The sector data in the March release covers the 12 months to February 2026, reported one month in arrears. The six industries with the highest insolvency volumes in that period were: construction (3,851 cases, 17% of all cases with industry captured), wholesale and retail trade (3,652, 16%), accommodation and food service activities (3,304, 14%), administrative and support services (2,404, 10%), and professional, scientific and technical activities, followed by manufacturing.
Construction's position at the top of that table is not new. Construction companies made up 17% of all business collapses in 2025, the largest share of any sector for the fourth year in a row. While March's headline increase is largely linked to real estate, the underlying pressures in construction have not gone away. Tight margins, rising costs, and ongoing delays in payment continue to create a challenging trading environment. For businesses working across complex supply chains, cash flow remains the key risk, where issues in one part of a project can quickly ripple through others.
For procurement teams with suppliers in construction, this is not a signal to exit those relationships. It is a signal to monitor them actively. A supplier that was financially healthy six months ago may have taken on a loss-making contract since, and that rarely shows up in payment behaviour until it is too late.
Wholesale, retail, accommodation, and food service all remain elevated, and they are worth noting for any organisation that sources from consumer-facing supply chains. The persistently high number of insolvencies in the UK reflects several ongoing pressures, including high interest rates at the beginning of the year, sustained high operating costs, and lower consumer spending, which constrained revenues across many sectors.
Reading the rolling rate alongside the monthly number
Monthly figures are volatile by nature. The more reliable signal is the 12-month rolling insolvency rate, which smooths out one-off events like the March real estate cluster. One in 194 companies on the Companies House effective register entered insolvency between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, at a rate of 51.6 per 10,000 companies. This was a decrease from the 53.0 per 10,000 rate for the 12 months ending March 2025.
While the insolvency rate has increased since the lows seen in 2020 and 2021, it remains much lower than the peak of 113.1 per 10,000 companies seen during the 2008-09 recession. That context matters: the current environment is elevated relative to the pandemic suppression period, but it is not a systemic crisis on the scale of 2008. The risk is concentrated, and it is manageable if you know where to look.
CVLs — creditors' voluntary liquidations — continue to dominate the overall picture. CVLs typically account for 75-80% of corporate insolvencies. A CVL is a director-led process: the company's own shareholders resolve to wind it up because it cannot pay its debts. Although the process is entered into on a voluntary basis, it is often the result of many months of financial distress. For procurement teams, this matters because a supplier entering a CVL rarely announces the fact in advance. By the time a notice appears on Companies House or in the London Gazette, the business has already stopped trading.
What this means for your supplier review process
Three things follow practically from the March 2026 data.
The first is sector weighting. If your supply base is concentrated in construction, wholesale, hospitality, or property management, your residual exposure to insolvency is higher than the headline rate suggests. Review those suppliers with greater frequency, not just at contract renewal.
The second is the connected-company risk illustrated by the real estate cluster. Single-month peaks caused by large numbers of connected companies entering administration on the same day are a known feature of the UK data, with precedents in 2006 and 2008 as well. If a supplier is part of a group structure, the financial health of the parent and sibling companies is relevant to your risk assessment, not just the entity you contract with. Persons with Significant Control (PSC) data published by Companies House can help identify group linkages, and it is one of the data points we surface automatically for every company on your Senserity watchlist.
The third is timing. Compulsory liquidations and administrations tend to arrive without warning. CVLs occasionally give slightly more notice if you track filing behaviour and financial signals upstream. A company that is filing accounts late, has changed auditors recently, or has had a director resignation in the past three months is showing the kinds of governance signals that often precede formal insolvency. At Senserity, financial and governance factors carry the highest weights in the overall risk score precisely because they are the most reliable early indicators. You can read more about how those scores are calculated on our finance team risk intelligence page.
The March 2026 data is a useful reminder that insolvency risk in the UK is not evenly distributed. The rolling rate is edging down, which is a modest positive. But within that, construction remains structurally distressed, the real estate sector produced a one-off shock, and CVLs continue at pace across the economy. The suppliers most likely to fail are the ones that look fine until they do not. Monitoring them continuously, rather than reviewing them once a year, is the practical response to that reality.