Annual jump in number of people taking up debt ‘breathing space’ schemes

Breathing space schemes give legal protections for people with problem debt.

The number of people taking breathing space from their financial problems has jumped by more than a third annually, according to figures from the Insolvency Service (Anthony Devlin/PA) (PA Archive)

The number of people taking “breathing space” from their financial problems has jumped by more than a third annually, according to figures from the Insolvency Service.

There were 23,179 breathing space registrations in the first three months of 2023, which was 34% higher than in the first quarter of 2022.

Within the total, 22,770 were standard breathing space registrations and 409 were mental health breathing space registrations.