We're still hearing too much anecdotal evidence from around the country that finance from Banks is still too hard to get hold of- despite all the recent government initiatives. At the same time, liquidations and insolvencies continue to rise in number.Figures released today show that insolvencies in England and wales rose to just over 4,500 in the last quarter of 2008- the quarter that proved we were in official recession.

Back in the recession of the early nineties, insolvencies peaked in 1992 when they were running at over 6000 a quarter. So, despite the serious slowdown in the economy in the last few months of 2008, the figures are bad, but not as bad as they could have been. Mind you, there is always a time lag in these stats, and insolvency numbers continue to rise even when we're coming out of a recession. 2009 1st quarter stats will be interesting to see. I predict that with loans still difficult to obtain by SME companies, figures could well rise to over 5000 this quarter.