In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Insolvency Service released a bulletin yesterday announcing temporary changes to delivery requirements for statutory insolvency forms. As a result of these amendments, practitioners will now be able to send such forms to Companies House as email attachments in addition to the in-person, postal and document exchange delivery mediums set out in Part 9 of the Insolvency Rules.
In this new era of remote working, this will doubtless confer considerable quality of life improvements on IPs having to devote far more time than usual to arranging the dispatch of statutory forms.
The requirements for form delivery under the new electronic system are as follows:
- Forms must be completed as normal, attached to an e-mail as a PDF document and sent to the following address relating to the jurisdiction required:
- England and Wales: Liquidation_EW@companieshouse.gov.uk
- Northern Ireland: Liquidation_NI@companieshouse.gov.uk
- Scotland: Liquidation_SC@companieshouse.gov.uk
Formalities to be observed when filing in this manner are that:
- The company name and company number must be included in the subject line – Any discrepancies between the PDF attachment and email with respect to the company name and number will likely result in the form being returned.
- Digital signatures may be used if preferred.
- Each email must only pertain to a single company and contain statutory form(s) for that one company.
- Only Insolvency Act filings or Companies Act filings which are submitted as a package of documents with Insolvency Act filings are eligible for delivery under this method.
- Any documents rejected due to failure to comply with any of these formalities (or any other issue) will be rejected and returned to the email address issuing them.
It should also be noted that this is only a temporary solution to the issues created by the Coronavirus pandemic and that the Insolvency Service bulletin notes Companies House is in the process of developing a system that will allow direct upload and filing of documents and supersede this email issuing procedure.
Read the full bulletin from the Insolvency Service.
For further guidance on insolvency matters, do get in touch with Tim Francis.
