UK Management Consultancy Insolvency Statistics

There were 317 management consultancy insolvencies between January and June 2026, against 332 in the same six months of 2025, a fall of 4.5%. Professional, scientific and technical activities as a whole fell further, by 7.5%, from 983 to 909, so management consultancy, at a third of the section’s total, is easing less than the section around it.

These are Company Debt calculations from Insolvency Service Table A1b data.

The rolling 12-month figure has actually turned, if only just: 655 cases for the year to June 2026 against 647 for the year to June 2025, up 1.2%. However the short-term numbers move month to month, this is not the trade falling fastest inside professional and technical services.

The professional, scientific and technical activities section holds a wide mix of trades, and they are not moving together. Other professional activities not elsewhere classified, a catch-all covering everything from management coaching to translation, fell 44.7%, though from a smaller base where a handful of cases swings the percentage sharply.

Specialised design activities fell 13.6%. Advertising and architectural and engineering consultancy were both essentially flat, down 1.2% and 4.1%.

Management consultancy sits in the middle of that spread, easing 4.5%, and because it is the largest single trade in the section, its own trajectory does more to set the section’s direction than any of its neighbours.

Nobody in this section is telling a uniform story. That matters for reading the headline professional-services figure: a section total moving one way can still contain a dominant trade moving quite differently underneath it, which is what is happening here.

Management consultancy insolvencies moved in a tight band before the pandemic, between 363 and 398 a year from 2016 to 2019. 2020 brought a fall to 289, in line with the wider pattern of support schemes and restricted winding-up petitions holding the normal insolvency cycle back.

The recovery from there was sharp and sustained. 532 in 2021, 645 in 2022, 708 in 2023: three consecutive years of increases that nearly doubled the pre-pandemic level, as businesses spent heavily on strategy, restructuring and digital-transformation advice coming out of the pandemic and consultancy headcount expanded to meet it.

2024 brought a pull-back to 665, and 2025 ticked back up to 670. Two years past the 2023 peak, the sector has settled into a plateau rather than a clean recovery, one that still sits 68% above the last normal year.

In the consultancy cases we see, the business usually has almost nothing to sell if the advice stops landing, no stock, no premises worth much, sometimes not even much of a team once contractors are stood down. The whole asset is the next signed engagement, and the gap between one contract ending and the next one starting is where the company actually fails.

The pattern we see most often is a single public-sector or corporate framework contract that has quietly become most of the billing. It looked like security when it was won. It looks very different the week a department tightens its sign-off thresholds or a corporate client freezes discretionary spend, because there is rarely a second client of that size waiting to take its place.

VAT and PAYE arrears usually show up first, often after a client payment milestone slips or a contract is delayed rather than cancelled outright, so the director keeps expecting the cash any month now.

By the time we are called in, that expectation has usually been running for two or three quarters, and a personal guarantee on an office lease or a business loan is doing more of the worrying than the client relationship itself.

We would not start with the pipeline value on the CRM. We would look at how much of next quarter’s billing sits with one client, how many months the company could fund itself with zero new work, what associate and contractor costs are already committed against unsigned engagements, and what HMRC is actually owed.

A consultancy waiting on one delayed public-sector payment, or between two genuine engagements, is usually in a stronger position than it feels. The options narrow fastest once a creditor, often HMRC, moves first, so the conversation is worth having before that happens rather than after.

SIC group 702 covers companies whose recorded primary business is management consultancy: advice on strategy, organisation, marketing, operations and related business activities sold to other organisations. It does not include accountancy, legal, architectural or IT consultancy, which are recorded under separate codes.

This is the largest single SIC group in professional, scientific and technical activities, at roughly 670 insolvencies a year, so month-to-month figures are a reasonably reliable guide here. The year-to-date and rolling 12-month totals remain the steadier measure.

These are company counts, not the number of consultants, contractors or clients affected. Many management consultancies are small, and some of the largest advisory practices operate as partnerships or LLPs rather than companies, so this page does not capture the whole consulting industry, only the part incorporated as companies.

The figures are insolvency volumes, not a failure rate. They are not adjusted for the number of active management consultancies, which expanded significantly after 2020, so a high count does not, on its own, mean a high rate of failure.

The SIC 702 figures come from Table A1b and are not seasonally adjusted. The latest month is provisional and can be revised.

None of the figures above decide whether a particular consultancy is viable. What matters is narrower: how concentrated the client base is, how many months of overheads the company could fund with no new engagements signed, and what is genuinely owed to HMRC once any delayed client payments are accounted for.

Plenty of consultancies in difficulty are sound businesses carrying a working-capital gap created by a delayed client payment or a slow contract-renewal cycle, and that is usually fixable if it is addressed early.

If you are reading this with a payment run coming and a client milestone that has not landed, the thing worth knowing is that the earlier you speak to someone, the more room there is to move: supplier or lender terms renegotiated, an HMRC Time to Pay arrangement, or a rescue procedure such as a Company Voluntary Arrangement or administration.

Once a winding-up petition is advertised, the bank account is usually frozen within days, and at that point creditors’ voluntary liquidation may be the only route still open. If you want to talk it through first, our insolvency advice for directors is the place to start.