Sharp rise in company debt judgments

The non-profit organisation collects decree and judgment information from jurisdictions across the British Isles and Ireland. In Scotland it collects information on small claims, summary, ordinary cause and simple procedure sheriff’s court decrees. A decree is incontrovertible proof that debt has not been managed.

It has reported that there were 1,573 decrees issued against all businesses in Scotland during Q1 and Q2 2018, 31 percent more than during the same period of the previous year.

A massive 64 percent rise in the number of decrees issued against companies accounted for this increase. In sharp contrast the number of decrees registered against unincorporated businesses, which are generally smaller, decreased by 19 percent.

Despite rising in number, the average company decree’s value halved causing the total value of company decrees to fall 17 percent; the total value of non-corporate decrees surged 51 percent. Together, these changes caused the total value of all business decrees to drop two percent.

During Q1 and Q2 2018, 13,190 debt decrees were registered against Scottish consumers, 20 percent more than in the first half of 2017. This combined with an 11 percent fall in average value caused the total value of all consumer decrees to increase by seven percent.

Only 3.42 percent of decrees were marked as satisfied during the first half of 2018, far lower than the 14.54 percent of satisfied debt judgments in England and Wales, where satisfaction rates are generally higher owing to legal differences.