§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many business failures have occurred in (a) Wandsworth and (b) Putney in the first nine months of this year, and whether the number has increased since last year.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Baroness Denton of Wakefield)No geographical information on creditors' voluntary liquidations is available. For compulsory liquidations and bankruptcy orders the only geographical information available is by the court in which the order was made. This is not a good basis for analysing business location, since many cases in England and Wales are dealt with in London regardless of the business's location, and work may be moved between courts according to differing workloads.
Information for businesses in Wandsworth and Putney could only be obtained by scrutinising individual case files, which would involve disproportionate cost.