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20% of company accounts filed on 1 October were in deficit
61,674 sets of company accounts were filed with Companies House on 1 October 2026. This is what they show.
The share of companies filing accounts that do not balance rose above its recent run rate on 1 October 2026. Of the 60,710 sets of accounts delivered to Companies House that day, 12,406 showed liabilities larger than assets, or 20 per cent, against an average of 17 per cent across the days we have measured.
Key points
- 61,674 sets of accounts were filed with Companies House on 1 October 2026.
- 12,406 of them, 20 per cent, reported net liabilities rather than net assets.
- 20,062 filings showed a weaker position than the prior year, against 34,341 that improved.
- The filings cover 35,505,442 employees between them.
- Raising of horses and other equines had the highest share in deficit at 49 per cent of 43 filings.
What happened
Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed with it as open data on the day it is received. On 1 October 2026 that amounted to 61,674 filings, of which 60,710 carried a balance sheet figure we could read. Those are the accounts this report covers.
Of them, 12,406 reported net liabilities: the company owed more than it owned at its balance sheet date. That is 20 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 1 October 2026, 20,062 filings were weaker than a year earlier and 34,341 were stronger, meaning 37 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 | 3,758 | 28% |
| Buying and selling of own real estate | 2,827 | 30% |
| Other business support service activities n.e.c. | 2,546 | 20% |
| Management consultancy activities other than financial management | 2,242 | 18% |
| Activities of other holding companies n.e.c. | 1,945 | 15% |
| Development of building projects | 1,618 | 28% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Raising of horses and other equines | 43 | 49% |
| Other retail sale of food in specialised stores | 91 | 41% |
| Retail sale of bread, cakes, flour confectionery and sugar confectionery in specialised stores | 47 | 36% |
| Production of electricity | 193 | 35% |
| Retail sale of clothing in specialised stores | 196 | 34% |
| Public houses and bars | 310 | 34% |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Bexley | 28 | 46% |
| Rochford | 28 | 39% |
| Kendal | 21 | 38% |
| Coalville | 24 | 38% |
| Warwick | 67 | 37% |
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.