The Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space Moratorium and Mental Health Crisis Moratorium) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020 ("the Regulations") came into force on 4 May 2021. Four years on, two recent judgments will be of particular interest to practitioners who grapple with the application of the Regulations in cases of secured debt. As Mellor J put it in one of those judgments (Bluestone Mortgages Ltd v Stoute [2025] EWHC 755 (Ch) ("Bluestone")), "the drafting of the Regulations leaves a lot to be desired, so guidance from Court decisions is in demand." With Bluestone and the Court of Appeal's judgment in Forbes v Seculink Ltd and Forbes v Interbay Funding Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 690 ("Forbes") now available, at least some of that demand has been met.
There's a lot of noise around AI in the world of professional services and insolvency is no exception. Lots of firms, especially those at the larger end of the spectrum, are shouting from the rooftops about how much they are spending on implementing AI.
People tend not to like regulation. It conjures images of clipboards, tick boxes and reprimands. It’s the same across all sectors: teachers don’t like Ofsted; doctors dislike the General Medical Council; and no one likes traffic wardens. Insolvency Practitioners (IPs) may feel similarly.
One of the joys of insolvency law and practice in the UK is that practitioners in one part of the UK are able to operate across all parts of the UK, at least from a licensing perspective. However, despite statutory corporate insolvency law being predominantly Westminster driven, practice differs significantly between the ‘Home Nations', and no more acutely so than that between England & Wales on the one part and Scotland on the other.
