To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many people were declared bankrupt in (a) Southampton, (b) Test Valley borough and (c) the ceremonial county of Hampshire in each year since 1997. (251097)

Table 1 shows the number of bankruptcies in (a) Southampton, (b) Test Valley and (c) Hampshire in each year from 2000 to 2007, derived from postcodes provided by bankrupt individuals^1,2. Earlier years figures are not available.

¹ Classifying bankrupts into administrative geographies is done using the postcode that the bankrupt individual provides. The use of this in assigning an individual to a borough is thus only as reliable as the postcode information provided.

² In particular, inaccurate or missing postcodes mean that the numbers in the above table will be subject to an element of missing data. Nationally, this proportion has been decreasing from about 12 per cent. in 2000 to less than 4 per cent. in 2007.