Recent weeks have seen four major changes made to the regime surrounding personal and corporate insolvency, which R3 – the Association of Business Recovery Professionals summarised in a series of tweets.
At the start of October, the organisation’s press office tweeted: “Lots of changes to the insolvency regime … bankruptcy, Debt Relief Orders, fees and business rescue all being updated.”
They went on to outline each change in more detail:
Fees
Corporate insolvency fees will now be estimated upfront, so an insolvent company’s creditors can see what work is due to be carried out by the insolvency practitioner.
Any fee-paying work above this must be approved by the creditors, otherwise no additional fees may be paid to the IP.
Bankruptcy
A major change to the bankruptcy limit saw the £750 minimum threshold to declare bankruptcy – which had remained unchanged ever since 1986 – raised substantially to £5,000.
The move means fewer personal insolvents should be forced into bankruptcy by their creditors, and corrects the oversight of the threshold not being linked with inflation.
Business Utilities
A campaign by R3 themselves has led to a change in the way business utilities are supplied during a period of corporate insolvency.
Suppliers are now not allowed to cut off insolvent business customers, as long as they are still trading as part of a corporate recovery attempt.
Debt Relief Orders
Finally, Debt Relief Orders, a less punishing form of personal insolvency than bankruptcy or even individual voluntary arrangements, have been given wider scope.
You can now enter into a DRO with anywhere up to £1,000 of assets and £20,000 of debt – up from £300 of assets and just £1,000 of debt before.
Together, all of these changes have given more security to personal and corporate insolvents alike – whether by making insolvency methods more available, or by protecting essential supplies while corporate recovery is in progress.
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