The Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space Moratorium and Mental Health Crisis Moratorium) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020, commonly referred to as the "Breathing Space Regulations", came into force on 4 May 2021. The Regulations provide eligible individuals with problem debt a period of protection from their creditors known as a "breathing space moratorium". The aim of the "breathing space" is to give people the time to access professional debt advice, without the stress of spiralling debt and the threat of creditor enforcement action (similar to the new Part A1 moratorium in favour of companies). However, ongoing liabilities must continue to be paid during this time.

There are two types of breathing space moratorium:

• A standard moratorium lasts for up to 60 days, to enable debtors to seek professional debt advice while most interest, fees and penalties on their debts are frozen.
• A "mental health crisis" moratorium is available for those receiving mental health crisis treatment and affords greater protection for debtors. The moratorium lasts for the duration of the individual’s treatment (however long it lasts), plus 30 days.

The Insolvency Service has just published statistics on utilisation of the new breathing space regime in its first year, to 30 April 2022. In the first year, 1 in 736 adults in England and Wales (a rate of 13.3 per 10,000) used the scheme, with 63,864 breathing space registrations in total. North East England had the highest rate of registrations, while London had the lowest, which is perhaps unsurprising as this reflects the rate of individuals entering formal insolvency procedures in the same regions from 2016 to 2021. Breathing space registrations were highest among 35 to 44 year olds (closely followed by 25 to 34 year olds), and lowest for those aged 65 and over.

With such a limited period of "breathing space" (under the standard moratorium at least), it would be interesting to know how many people managed to avoid a formal insolvency procedure as a result. While the total rate of individual insolvencies decreased for a second year in 2021, this is likely to have been affected by government financial support measures put in place during the coronavirus pandemic, so it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the success of the scheme from the data, notwithstanding the seemingly high number of registrations.