THE levels of severe business distress in Yorkshire is falling quicker than almost any other region in the UK according to research.

The latest quarterly Begbies Traynor Red Flag Alert research, which monitors the financial health of UK businesses, shows incidences of very serious or ‘critical’ business distress in Yorkshire dropped by 18 per cent in the three months to June this year, compared to the first three months of this year, affecting 196 businesses in quarter two and 240 in the first quarter of 2014.

Across the rest of country, an average fall in serious distress of 10 per cent was recorded.

Only the Midlands saw a more dramatic improvement than Yorkshire, with a fall in ‘critical’ business distress levels of 19 per cent.

By contrast Scotland, Northern Ireland and the South West of England all saw incidences of serious distress rise, by seven per cent, three per cent and one per cent respectively.

Year on year, from the second quarter of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013, Yorkshire saw a three per cent decrease in distress compared with a UK national average drop of nine per cent.

Begbies Traynor’s research reveals that levels of ‘significant’ distress have been primarily driven by smaller businesses (SMEs), which, nationally, saw a 40 per cent rise in distress over the past 12 months to 217,855 businesses.

Among larger organisations, distress levels fell by 9 per cent to 19,507 over the same period.