Top 20 most bankrupt towns
Sarah Coles
Sep 28th 2010 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Debt, Banking & Borrowing
A new study has revealed the parts of England and Wales where you are most likely to be declared bankrupt. It makes sobering reading - not least for Ed Milliband, whose constituency makes the top 20.
So where are the most insolvent towns, and what does this tell us?
The study by insolvency trade body R3 revealed that personal insolvency reached record levels in 2009, with over 134,000 for England and Wales.
The top 20 most insolvent places in the England and Wales were:
1 Torbay (which also topped the list a year earlier)
2 Mansfield
3 Weston-Super-Mare
4 North Tyneside
5 Kingston upon Hull East
6 Plymouth, Moor View
7 Gateshead
8 Plymouth, Sutton and Devenport
9 Wellingborough
10 Walsall North
11 St Austell and Newquay
12 Ashfield
13 Grantham and Stamford
14 Cannock Chase
15 Corby
16 Doncaster North
17 South Swindon
18 Eastbourne
19 Isle of Wight
20 Hastings and Rye
The list is dominated by the North East and South West, both severely hit by a decline in tourism and heavy industries.
It also features a number of areas with traditionally lower levels of income, which mean they were always more finely poised financially, and always going to suffer more in the downturn.
At the other end of the scale, the constituency with the lowest levels of personal insolvency was Wimbledon in London, followed by Tooting, Ealing (London) and Sheffield Hallam Co.
R3's President Steven Law commented: "Over the course of the last decade, personal insolvencies have increased by 350% and our research also shows that 42% of the British population are currently finding it a struggle financially to get through the month. We would expect personal insolvencies to continue to rise right across England and Wales over the next few years."
For anyone worried about debts, this should come as a wake-up call that they need to act fast and tackle them head-on. With 134,000 personal insolvencies in 2009, bankruptcy is no distant threat, it could be a terrible reality for hundreds of thousands of households.
If you are worried about debt, it's worth facing up to it as quickly as possible.
For the first steps to budgeting you can check out our guide here, and if you need help, there are some of the better debt organisations listed here.