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21% of company accounts filed on 29 August were in deficit
23,007 sets of company accounts were filed with Companies House on 29 August 2026. This is what they show.
The share of companies filing accounts that do not balance rose above its recent run rate on 29 August 2026. Of the 22,717 sets of accounts delivered to Companies House that day, 4,793 showed liabilities larger than assets, or 21 per cent, against an average of 17 per cent across the days we have measured.
Key points
- 23,007 sets of accounts were filed with Companies House on 29 August 2026.
- 4,793 of them, 21 per cent, reported net liabilities rather than net assets.
- 7,436 filings showed a weaker position than the prior year, against 12,326 that improved.
- The filings cover 110,235 employees between them.
- Other holiday and other collective accommodation had the highest share in deficit at 38 per cent of 65 filings.
What happened
Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed with it as open data on the day it is received. On 29 August 2026 that amounted to 23,007 filings, of which 22,717 carried a balance sheet figure we could read. Those are the accounts this report covers.
Of them, 4,793 reported net liabilities: the company owed more than it owned at its balance sheet date. That is 21 per cent.
The numbers
Every set of accounts carries the prior year alongside the current one, so each filing shows its own direction of travel. On 29 August 2026, 7,436 filings were weaker than a year earlier and 12,326 were stronger, meaning 38 per cent of those with a comparable prior year went backwards. That is above the 17 per cent average across the days measured so far.
Who filed most
| Industry | Filings | In deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate | 1,431 | 25% |
| Buying and selling of own real estate | 1,316 | 32% |
| Management consultancy activities other than financial management | 953 | 20% |
| Other business support service activities n.e.c. | 811 | 20% |
| Other service activities n.e.c. | 599 | 17% |
| Information technology consultancy activities | 590 | 17% |
Where the deficits are concentrated
Ranked by the share of filings reporting net liabilities, among industries with at least 30 filings that day.
| Industry | Filings | In deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Other holiday and other collective accommodation | 65 | 38% |
| Retail sale of clothing in specialised stores | 92 | 36% |
| Public houses and bars | 148 | 36% |
| Retail of furniture, lighting, and similar (not musical instruments or scores) in specialised store | 40 | 35% |
| Licensed restaurants | 223 | 35% |
| Agents specialized in the sale of other particular products | 42 | 33% |
By registered office
Towns with at least 20 filings that day. A registered office is an address for service and not necessarily where a business trades, so this is a weaker signal than the industry split.
| Town | Filings | In deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Witney | 23 | 43% |
| Market Harborough | 21 | 43% |
| Burnley | 27 | 37% |
| Derby | 93 | 37% |
| Wokingham | 28 | 36% |
What this does and does not mean
Net liabilities are not the same thing as insolvency. A company funded by its parent, or by a director loan, or one that is early in its life and still carrying losses forward, can report negative net assets for years while paying everything it owes. The figure is a fact about a filing, not a verdict on a business.
Companies House does not verify the information filed with it. Everything here is what companies reported about themselves.
What happens next
The next batch of accounts is published the following working day, and this report runs again. The series builds a picture no single filing can give: whether the share of British companies filing accounts that do not balance is rising, and which industries are carrying it.
The series so far
How this was produced. Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed with it as open data. Cap News downloads that file each working day, reads the tagged figures out of each filing and joins them to the company register. Nothing here is hand picked. The method sets out what is counted and what is not.