The number of small businesses going bankrupt is set to hit the highest level in a decade, the Conservative party claimed yesterday.
Figures from Dun and Bradstreet, the business information group, published in a Bank of England report, showed that 36,637 small businesses were liquidated or went bankrupt in the first three quarters of this year.
This represented an 11.3 per cent rise compared with the first nine months of last year. The greatest rise was in eastern England, where failures soared by 24.4 per cent to 1,900. The south-west and south-east suffered increases of 23.8 per cent and 21.4 per cent respectively.
Tim Yeo, shadow trade and industry secretary, said: "Firms are being strangled by red tape and over-burdened by regulation . . . If this trend continues, we will have the highest level of business closures for more than a decade," he said.
