IT business failures continue to fall

Just 37 firms in the IT sector hung up their boots in January as conditions improve, says Experian

IT sector business failures fell by almost a third in January as fewer UK firms overall hit the wall, data from Experian claims.

According to Experian, 1,266 UK firms hung up their boots in the first month of 2011, compared with 1,426 a year earlier. This represents 0.07 per cent of the UK's business community.

That improvement was replicated in the IT sector, which saw a 30 per cent fall in casualties to 37, or 0.04 per cent of that community.

Yorkshire saw the biggest drop in the rate of insolvencies across the board, from 0.14 per cent in 2010 to 0.06 per cent in January this year.

Max Firth, managing director of Experian pH, said: "Our data also shows that the post-recession business population is beginning to increase once again, with the net number of firms trading up by one per cent when compared with last January."