Neil Wilby Media

The Insolvency Service has reported that the number of companies declared insolvent rose by 27% to 2,163 in June, 2023, reaching 6,403 in the second quarter of the year (April to June) and representing the worst quarter for insolvencies since the first three months of 2009.

Directors are being forced, increasingly, to dissolve their companies to pay off debts to creditors, with the number of compulsory liquidations jumping by 77%, to reach 260 in June. Largely driven by an increase in winding-up petitions presented by the Inland Revenue.

The tax authority was prevented from issuing winding-up petitions during the CoVid-19 pandemic but has become more active since the ban was fully lifted in 2022.

Winding up petitions are required to be advertised in The London Gazette. Known more commonly as The Gazette, it is one of the official public records of the UK government. There are regional versions of The Gazette, but, as a rule, all petitions advertised in England and Wales will be published in the London Gazette.

After the creditor has served the notice to the debtor company, they must wait a minimum of seven days before advertising the notice in The Gazette. The notice must also be served at least seven days before the scheduled court hearing.

As The Gazette is a public record, the advertisement effectively means that the winding-up petition is within the public realm and anyone can see that company is subject to a winding-up petition.

The notice contains information about when and where the petition will be heard. It also invites those with an interest to support or oppose the petition or give notice of their intention.

The Gazette publishes all the winding-up petitions that they receive on a daily basis here.

That page lists all of the winding-up petition notices submitted to The Gazette in reverse order from those submitted the previous day back to those submitted in 1998. If you know that a creditor has advertised a petition on the previous day, you may want to browse through the records to find the relevant notice, but if you are looking for an older petition or are not sure if a petition has been advertised yet, it’s much easier to use the search function on the site.

The online version of The Gazette is the official version, but you can also order a printed version of the relevant publication (the London Gazette, Edinburgh Gazette, Belfast Gazette etc) by contacting them here.

Having the winding-up petition advertised in The Gazette is very serious: banks and other creditors often check the petition on a daily basis and will freeze the company’s bank accounts and/or attach to the petition for unpaid debts as appropriate.

After the petition has been advertised, the next stage in the process will be the court hearing where the court will (if it thinks it is appropriate), make a winding-up order. A winding-up order is different to a winding-up petition. The making of the winding-up order marks the moment that the company officially goes into liquidation. The Gazette also advertises all of the winding-up orders issued by the courts on a separate part of the site.

Although they still appear to be trading, one company experiencing serious financial problems, according to a ‘we are on the brink of collapse’ public statement issued by its owner last September, has appeared several times elsewhere on this Neil Wilby Media website, for a number of public interest reasons: A well-established computer repair company based in Ormskirk, West Lancashire, Danoli Solutions Ltd., may yet survive the tax squeeze and credit crunch but the portents are not good, particularly in the light of what appear to be serious governance failings (read more here).

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Page last updated: Wednesday 19th July, 2023 at 07h25

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Picture credit: Insolvency Service

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