Drop in Yorkshire’s business failures
YORKSHIRE business failures dropped 2.8% in the last quarter of 2009 according to research by Equifax.
The business information provider’s latest failures report show that in 2009 there was an 18% increase in the number of businesses that went bust nationally.
But the last three months of the year also saw a drop in the number of business failures in every region except the West Midlands.
Equifax believes that this is a clear sign that the UK economy may be ‘turning the corner’.
Neil Munroe, external affairs director at Equifax, said: “From the middle of 2009 onwards we could see that the rate of failures in businesses was slowing down, compared to the end of 2008 and the early part of 2009.
“Our figures for quarter 4 show a continuation of this trend with an overall 7.7% year-on-year decrease.”
Businesses in the East Midlands and the South West showed the greatest signs of recovery in the fourth quarter with year-on-year drops in failures of 20.2% and 21.3% respectively.
The London business sector also appeared to fare better in the last quarter of 2009 with a 13.4% drop year-on-year.
Mr Munroe added: “Clearly the UK economy is not out of the woods, as the business community in the West Midlands is sure to agree.
“When comparing 2009 to 2007 overall there is a 39.5% increase in failures. This means the businesses that have survived so far must continue to be very careful about how they manage their customer and supplier relationships to ensure they get paid on time and don’t get caught out by bad debt or failure.
“And they also need to make sure they are well prepared for external factors that they can’t change – it’s unclear yet how the VAT change back to 17.5% is going to affect business. But we think our latest figures should give encouragement to those organisations that have come through the last 12 months relatively unscathed.”
Every business sector – apart from wholesale – also saw a downturn in businesses going bust in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to 2008.
