The logo is new. More usefully, so is the website.
We have rebuilt the site from scratch, and put a good deal of work into the part most firms leave until last: actually explaining things.
Why we started again
The old site was organised the way insolvency firms usually organise their websites — by procedure. A page for administration, a page for CVAs, a page for liquidation.
That works if you already know what a CVA is. It is not much help if you are a director who cannot pay a VAT bill, has had a letter from HMRC, and does not know what to search for.
So this one is arranged around the questions people actually arrive with. Am I insolvent? What happens now a petition has been served? Can this business be saved? What would bankruptcy mean for my house?
The guides
The part we are most pleased with is the guides. They are free, they are on the Resources page, and there is no sign-up, no email address and no gate in front of them.
- Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation: A Guide for Directors
- Company Administration: A Guide for Directors
- Company Voluntary Arrangements: A Guide
- Closing a Solvent Company: An MVL Guide
- Bankruptcy: A Guide for Individuals
- Individual Voluntary Arrangements: A Guide
- Is Your Business Viable? The Decision Path
- Overdrawn Director’s Loan Accounts
- A free 13-week cash-flow forecast template
They are longer than most things of their kind, deliberately. Explanations of insolvency procedures tend to be either a marketing page pretending to be information, or a restatement of the legislation that nobody can read. We have tried to write the thing in between: what the procedure actually involves, how long it takes, what it costs, what it means for you personally, and where it is the wrong answer.
That last part matters. Each guide says plainly when the procedure it describes is not what you need. A CVA is the wrong instrument more often than it is the right one. Bankruptcy is sometimes the shortest way out of a position that will not otherwise resolve, and sometimes precisely the wrong thing to do. We would rather tell you that on a web page than after you have paid us.
The things people most often get wrong
We have drawn several of these out into diagrams, because they are the points where a wrong assumption costs people real money.
- Discharge from bankruptcy at twelve months does not end everything. Income payments can run for up to three years, and a bankruptcy can sit on your credit file for six.
- A statutory demand is not a prerequisite. A creditor can establish that a company cannot pay by other means, so no warning may come at all.
- An approved CVA does not bind every creditor. Secured and preferential creditors sit outside it, and post-approval debts are not automatically included.
- With a winding-up petition, the stage matters more than the size of the debt. Options narrow as it progresses, and the Gazette advertisement is usually how your bank finds out.
- A protocol IVA does not require you to sell your home. Where your beneficial interest is £10,000 or more, the term extends instead.
If you are reading this because something has gone wrong
Then the most useful sentence on the whole site is probably the shortest one:
Directors rarely regret asking early. They frequently regret asking late.
Options narrow as matters progress — sometimes quickly, and usually before it is obvious that they are narrowing. If a creditor has served a statutory demand, presented a petition, or your bank has restricted the account, the honest advice is to take advice this week rather than next.
The first conversation is free of charge, confidential, and commits you to nothing. You do not need to work out which procedure applies before you call, and you do not need to have decided anything. Working that out is most of what a first meeting is for.