§ Mr. Richard Wainwrightasked the Minister for Trade how many company liquidations and bankruptcies have been declared in each county council and metropolitan county council area of England and Wales since May 1979; and if he will make a statement.
§ Dr. Vaughan[pursuant to his reply, 21 December 1982]: I regret that figures of company liquidations by individual area are not available.
The nearest available information on bankruptcies is given in the following table. It gives numbers of bankruptcies handled by the High Court and the county courts having bankruptcy jurisdiction in each area for the calendar years 1979 to 1981. The figures relate to net cases administered and are given for complete years because the quarterly figures are less reliable and not on exactly the same basis.
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Bankruptcies 1979 to 1981 Number Greater London High Court 2,101 County courts 459 Metropolitan Counties Greater Manchester 565 Merseyside 328 South Yorkshire 254 Tyne and Wear 214 West Midlands 560 West Yorkshire 383 Non-Metropolitan Counties England Avon 281 Bedfordshire 131 Berkshire 292 Buckinghamshire 96 Cambridgeshire 164 Cheshire 156 Cleveland 97 Cornwall 88 Cumbria 80 Derbyshire 125 Devon 291 Dorset 121 Durham 73 East Sussex 343 Essex 319 Gloucestershire 86 Hampshire 215 Hereford and Worcester 125 Hertfordshire 173 Humberside 169 Isle of Wight 21 Kent 462 Lancashire 301 Leicestershire 178 Lincolnshire 90 Norfolk 209 Northamptonshire 201 Northumberland * North Yorkshire 143 Nottinghamshire 137 Oxfordshire 101 Shropshire 72 Somerset 102 Staffordshire 163 Suffolk 88 Surrey 118 Warwickshire 39 West Sussex * Wiltshire 112 Wales Clwyd 99 Dyfed 87 Gwent 112 Gwynned 58 Mid-Glamorgan 125 Powys * South Glamorgan 103 West Glamorgan 156 * No courts with bankruptcy jurisdiction.