The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng MP, has responded to a letter we wrote jointly with the Institute of Directors, calling for his support in working with HMRC to help business rescue efforts. 

R3 calls on the Government to tighten the drafting of the Pension Schemes Bill to ensure that those directors seeking to restructure their companies and pension schemes in good faith – and those advisers, including insolvency practitioners, supporting these efforts – do not face the threat of significant civil and criminal liabilities as set out in the legislation.

We are writing to express our serious concerns regarding the Government’s proposal, published by your predecessor in the Draft Finance Bill 2019-20, to elevate some tax debts to preferential status in insolvencies, and to urge the Government to reconsider its position. 

The purpose of this report is to consider the reasons for the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of company voluntary arrangements (“CVAs”) and to investigate the outcomes where CVAs fail. The frequency of CVAs is reasonably low when compared with alternative corporate Insolvency Act 1986 procedures1 and it has been commented that CVAs have a high failure rate.2 The research project aims to identify ‘successful’ and ‘failed’ CVAs and by doing so, identify key characteristics which will in turn allow practical guidance to be provided to insolvency practitioners (“IPs”) and also inform policy recommendations to Government.

With growing economic pressures, particularly for the retail and leisure sectors, a number of high profile businesses have entered into or explored CVAs in 2018. This research identifies a number of possible policy changes to ensure that CVAs are more effective and used more widely to support business rescue in the UK economy.