Although compulsory liquidations in England and Wales were up 0.5% on the previous quarter (4,080), they were down a massive 19% on the second quarter of 2009, when 5,041 companies went into liquidation.

There were 777 administrations in the second quarter of this year – down from 783 in the first quarter of 2010 and also a drop of 24% from 1,027 in the second quarter of 2009.

However, Steven Law, president of insolvency trade body R3, warned this could just be the calm before the storm with regards to company closures.

He said: "Businesses can’t afford to be complacent. We would expect corporate insolvencies to rise after a recession as they did in previous recessions, but the figures only show a 0.5% increase in company liquidations from the last quarter.

"We suspect these increases in corporate insolvency may not show until the end of this year or next. The early stages of recovery are typically a challenging time for businesses as creditors begin to be more aggressive in their debt collection but, from what I am seeing, creditors are being more lenient than in previous recessions."