Working for The Insolvency Service
Source: gov.uk (2025-09-19)

We help deliver economic confidence by delivering an effective insolvency regime for business and citizens. We deliver essential services which support a fair, robust economy.

About the Insolvency Service

Insolvency Service Candidate Information Pack (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68cc14c6275fc9339a248a24/Insolvency_Service_Candidate_Information_Pack__September_2025_.pdf) (PDF, 6.29 MB, 17 pages)

We deliver an effective insolvency regime for businesses and citizens, and support thousands of people each year who are in financial difficulty. The work we do is important to the proper functioning of markets and the economy in general.

As well as delivering essential services to support the economy, the Insolvency Service is a great place to work, learn and grow your career.

We value technical skills and experience, and place great emphasis on lifelong development to support our people to undertake the important work we do. We offer flexible and hybrid working, with offices at regional centres around the UK.

Our work is varied, challenging and demanding, but engaging, exciting and rewarding. We are constantly evolving to ensure the UK’s insolvency regime remains effective and can respond to the challenges of changing economic conditions, delivered and underpinned by our brilliant people.

Search for jobs

You can view our jobs and apply on the Civil Service Jobs website (https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?pageaction=searchbyquick&storesearchcontext=1&nghr_dept=183930).

Our Mission

Delivering economic confidence

Maximising returns to creditors

Supporting those in financial distress

Tackling financial wrongdoing

Our principal role is to deliver economic confidence. We do this by supporting those in financial distress, tackling financial wrongdoing and maximising returns to creditors. We provide the frameworks that deal with insolvency and the financial misconduct that sometimes accompanies or leads to it.

Our aim is a corporate and personal insolvency regime which is fair and gives confidence to businesses and investors to take the commercial decisions necessary to support economic growth

Our Teams

We employ around 2,000 people in a variety of roles.

Frontline teams administer bankruptcies and debt relief orders. They are supported by our specialist insolvency examiners who deal with bankruptcy and debt relief restrictions orders and undertakings

Our investigation teams look into insolvent companies which are in liquidation and disqualify unfit directors. They also wind-up trading companies if there is evidence of misconduct.

Official receivers act as trustees or liquidators for bankrupts or insolvent companies when there is no private sector insolvency practitioner to do this.

The redundancy payment team provides a vital service. They issue redundancy payments and other insolvency payments from the National Insurance Fund to people who have lost their jobs through company failure. These include arrears of pay, holiday pay and notice pay. On average, we pay out £300 million to around 70,000 claimants a year.

Our policy and technical specialists ensure the insolvency regime adapts to changing market conditions and provide advice to ministers and other government departments.

The Legal Services Directorate deals with civil and criminal cases. The criminal team prosecute a range of offences around insolvency-related fraud and corporate misconduct, and pursue confiscation to deprive criminals of the proceeds of their crime in appropriate cases. The civil team undertakes a range of litigation, such as disqualifying company directors for their misconduct, winding-up companies acting contrary to the public interest, costs litigation and, where appropriate, we obtain and pursue compensation orders.

Our customer service helpline provides information to thousands of debtors, creditors and members of the public every month. We’re trusted experts on the insolvency process and redundancy payments, and we help people get further information from the right places when they need it most.

The corporate centre has specialised teams supporting all our work, and consists of HR, Finance and Commercial, Communications, Strategy and Change leading on Project/Programme Management, and Business Services including Information and Technology.