A marked decrease in business failures among small and medium pub, restaurant and hotel firms has been reported for April against the same month in 2010. In total 123 insolvencies in the leisure and hotels sector, which includes pubs and restaurants, took place in April, according to the latest Insolvency Index from Experian. That’s a decline of 4.65% on the number in April 2010. The percentage of businesses in the sector that failed in April 2011 also fell slightly against April 2010, from 0.15% to 0.14%. However, there’s been no change in the likelihood of business failure in the sector, the Index reports. The sector’s “financial strength” score, which predicts the likelihood of business failure in the next 12 months, with 100 being the least likely to fail, was unchanged from April 2010 on 78.96. And business failures in the leisure and hotels sector were above the overall average for small and medium firms, although the decline in failures was faster in the leisure industry. In April 2011, 0.1% of the active business community (1,808 companies) became insolvent. That’s a fall of 0.55% on the same period in April 2010. Meanwhile, just one business failure was registered in April 2011 in the brewery sector - the same as in April 2010. That sector’s financial strength score also remained unchanged at 80.94. The sector that fared the worst in April was property, where like-for-like business failures were up 70.3% to 184. Overall, the survey shows that areas of the country with the greatest like-for-like decline in business failures in April were the east midlands (-36.21%), west midlands (-19.07%) and Wales (-17.54%). The greatest increases in failures were in the east (26.16%), the south east (14.68%) and the north east (13.73%). The Index shows that in general, small firms are more likely to see a like-for-like decline in business failures. The number of insolvencies among businesses that employ three to five and six to 10 people declined by 17.04% and 1.52% respectively against April 2010. For firms employing 101-500 staff, like-for-like insolvencies increased 4.44%; for companies with more than 501 people, the proportion is 9.09%.