Public forecast 009 · permanent record
Will registered company insolvencies in England and Wales for July 2026 be between 1,550 and 2,150 inclusive?
RESOLVED — scored against the source named before the outcome was known.
- Question
- Will registered company insolvencies in England and Wales for July 2026 be between 1,550 and 2,150 inclusive?
- Probability band
- 80–90% — issued 2026-08-14, data cut-off 2026-08-14
- Frozen criterion
- Resolves TRUE if the number of registered company insolvencies in England and Wales in July 2026, as first published by the Insolvency Service in the monthly company insolvency statistics on 18 August 2026, is greater than or equal to 1,550 and less than or equal to 2,150. Scored against the figure as first published, not against later revisions.
- Resolves by
- 2026-08-18
- Resolution source (named in advance)
- https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/company-insolvency-statistics-releases
- Model
- judgement — reasoning recorded at issue, unchanged since
- Ledger id
lxf_external_009- Supersedes
- forecast 005 — corrections happen by supersession, never by edit
- Outcome
- TRUE — 1,931
- Evidence, as first published
- The number of registered company insolvencies in England and Wales was 1,931 in July 2026, 5% higher than in June 2026 (1,847) but 5% lower than the same month in the previous year (2,031 in July 2025). (source, published 2026-08-18)
- Brier score
- 0.0225 — band midpoint 0.85. 0 is perfect, 0.25 is what always saying 50% scores.
Reasoning recorded at issue — unchanged since, including where it turned out to be wrong: Identical question, band and criterion to lxf_external_005, which was withdrawn because its due date fell thirty minutes before its own source publishes. The band is deliberately unchanged: the only defect was the clock. There were 1,845 registered company insolvencies in June 2026 and 1,849 in May 2026 as restated in the June commentary, with June 10% below the 2,048 of June 2025. The band spans roughly 16% either side of a 1,845 base. An external review computed a standard deviation of about 7% on one-month changes over Dec 2025 to Jun 2026 and concluded this band is nearer 98% coverage than the 80-90% stated, and is therefore under-confident. That critique is probably right and the band is still being carried unchanged, because a band widened by caution and then narrowed once someone points it out is a band chosen to look good. If it resolves comfortably inside, that is evidence of under-confidence and it belongs in the calibration record rather than being tuned away beforehand.
If ten forecasts were issued at this band, the band claims roughly 8 or 9 of them should come true. Calibration — not certainty — is what the register is scored on.
What would prove this system wrong: a forecast on this register edited after issue, a resolution scored against anything but the source named in advance, or an accuracy claim made before ten outcomes have resolved in a domain. Every one is checkable from the raw ledger — the full falsification list.