Company Debt Ltd

Company Debt Ltd We are experienced, licensed insolvency experts who provide real support to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. Open Mon - Fri 9am–5:30pm

Our core focuses are business recovery and turnaround, managing any risks to your company and where necessary, business closures. Experienced company debt advice for sole traders, SMEs and large corporations. Follow us for company debt advice and news!

3 in 10 UK business owners have no pension of their own.For a lot of them, that isn't an oversight. The plan is the busi...
03/09/2026

3 in 10 UK business owners have no pension of their own.

For a lot of them, that isn't an oversight. The plan is the business. Build it, sell it one day, retire on the proceeds.

Here is the quiet risk in that plan. A pension is ring-fenced, diversified, and yours whatever happens to the company. A business is none of those things. It is one asset, undiversified, worth exactly what someone will pay for it on the day you need to sell. If the sale doesn't happen, or the number comes in lower than you pictured, the retirement goes with it.

We see the other end of this. The businesses that were meant to fund a retirement and didn't, because the market turned, or the buyer walked, or the thing that made the company valuable was the owner who now wants to leave.

None of this means don't back your business. It means a business is a plan A, not a pension. The owners who sleep best have something set aside that doesn't depend on the company selling at all.

Source: Rathbones research, 2026.

HMRC's headline last week: "436,000 sole traders and landlords make their tax digital."What it left out: that was barely...
28/08/2026

HMRC's headline last week: "436,000 sole traders and landlords make their tax digital."

What it left out: that was barely half of them.

Of the 864,000 people required to file their first Making Tax Digital update by 7 August, around 428,000 missed it. The system's first real test, and half of those in scope didn't clear it.

The part worth knowing: there are no penalties this year. From 6 April 2027, a missed quarterly deadline starts costing penalty points, and four points means a £200 fine.

So this is the free year. The one window to get the habit right before it carries a price. If you're a sole trader or landlord over £50,000 and 7 August slipped past you, it isn't a problem yet. It becomes one in April.

No business fails overnight.It fails gradually, then suddenly.The gradual part is quiet. A supplier put on pro forma. A ...
27/08/2026

No business fails overnight.

It fails gradually, then suddenly.

The gradual part is quiet. A supplier put on pro forma. A VAT quarter borrowed to cover wages. The management accounts you stopped opening because you already knew roughly what they'd say. None of it feels like failure at the time.

The sudden part is loud. The petition, the frozen account, the payroll that doesn't run. But that isn't the moment the business failed. It's the moment it became visible to everyone else.

Here is the part that matters. The gradual phase is where the options still exist. The sudden phase is where most of them have already gone.

So the question is never "is this the end." It's "which phase am I actually in." In the cases we see, directors are almost always further along than they let themselves believe, and the earlier you look, the more you can still do about it.

Three in four UK businesses have no employees.Not a small team. Not one part-timer. Just the owner. 4.3 million of the U...
21/08/2026

Three in four UK businesses have no employees.

Not a small team. Not one part-timer. Just the owner. 4.3 million of the UK's 5.7 million businesses are one person carrying all of it: the work, the invoices, the risk, the tax.

That number quietly changes how to read most other business statistics.

"Business resilience" usually conjures a finance function, a credit controller chasing overdue invoices, a bit of slack in the system. Most UK businesses have none of it. No one to chase the late payment, no buffer to absorb a bad month, no second person to notice the numbers turning before it is too late.

It also thins a line owners lean on. In a one-person business the company and the person sit financially close: the personal card that covers a supplier, the director's loan that builds up unnoticed, the personal guarantee on the lease. Limited liability protects less in practice than it looks on paper.

So a solo business failing is rarely a tidy corporate event. It is one person's livelihood, and usually their own money, on the line.

None of this is doom. It is that the smallest businesses run on the least margin for error, and the protections a bigger company takes for granted are ones a solo owner has to build on purpose, or go without.

Source: DBT Business Population Estimates, 2025.

The taxpayer has now covered £11.82 billion of Bounce Back Loans that were never repaid. If yours is one of them, here i...
20/08/2026

The taxpayer has now covered £11.82 billion of Bounce Back Loans that were never repaid. If yours is one of them, here is the part nobody tells you: you still owe it.

When a lender claims on the government guarantee, the debt does not disappear. The guarantee pays the bank. It does not clear you.
These were six-year loans from 2020 and 2021, so the final repayments are landing now. Waiting for the letters to go quiet does not work. They do not go quiet.

Used properly, a creditors' voluntary liquidation can write off a genuine, legitimately used balance. The route directors try to avoid is usually the one that ends it.

What happens to an unpaid Bounce Back Loan, and the options that work:

https://www.companydebt.com/bounce-back-loan-support-hub/
Free initial call, confidential, no obligation.

74% of company insolvencies in June were creditors' voluntary liquidations. That number says something most coverage mis...
19/08/2026

74% of company insolvencies in June were creditors' voluntary liquidations. That number says something most coverage misses.

A creditors' voluntary liquidation is not the dramatic version of company failure. It is not the court winding a company up against its will. It is the process a company's own directors start, deliberately, when they accept the business cannot continue and decide to close it properly.

So nearly three in four company failures are not businesses being shut down. They are businesses whose directors chose the timing.
That distinction matters, because the difference between a voluntary liquidation and a compulsory one is largely the difference between acting and waiting. The directors who move first keep some control: over when, over which practitioner, over how the wind-down is handled. The ones who wait get a court, an official receiver, and someone else's schedule.

The full monthly breakdown, by procedure and by sector:
https://www.companydebt.com/data/uk-insolvency-statistics/

Source: Insolvency Service, June 2026.

Directors almost never set out to make things worse. But when a company runs out of cash, panic produces a predictable s...
18/08/2026

Directors almost never set out to make things worse. But when a company runs out of cash, panic produces a predictable set of moves — and these are the ones that can turn a company problem into a personal one. ⚠️

Seven to know about, because each carries a legal consequence many directors don't see coming:

1️⃣ Keep trading and running up new debts after the point you knew, or should have known, the company couldn't recover. This is wrongful trading, and it can make you personally liable for the debts that piled up afterwards.
2️⃣ Repay your own director's loan before the other creditors. A liquidator can reverse it as a preference.
3️⃣ Clear one creditor you care about, or a family member, ahead of the rest. Same problem, same power to unwind it.
4️⃣ Sell the assets or client book cheaply to a company you also own. That can amount to a transaction at undervalue, and it is one of the things an investigation may examine closely. 🔍
5️⃣ Spend the VAT and PAYE money to keep trading. It feels like breathing room. It deepens the hole and can increase HMRC scrutiny.
6️⃣ Stop opening the HMRC post and hope it goes quiet. It doesn't. The problem escalates, potentially towards enforcement, a winding-up petition and serious disruption to the company. 📩
7️⃣ Strike the company off to make the debt disappear. It doesn't work, and trying to use strike-off to avoid creditors can create further problems.

None of these starts as a plan. Each is where panic can lead when nobody has laid out the legal alternatives.

And there are alternatives at every one of these forks — but they narrow fast once you have acted. ⏳

When does a director actually become personally liable, and how can you avoid it?

https://www.companydebt.com/advice/are-directors-personally-liable-for-company-debts/

If the company can't pay, get the options before you make any of these moves. Free initial call, confidential, no obligation.

Most businesses that get into trouble do not fail suddenly. They drift, and the director is often the last person to let...
17/08/2026

Most businesses that get into trouble do not fail suddenly. They drift, and the director is often the last person to let themselves notice.

Here are seven signs the drift may be underway. None is a verdict on its own. Together, they can form a pattern worth catching early — because early is when it is cheapest to fix. ⚠️

1️⃣ Money out has beaten money in for months, not weeks.
2️⃣ You have started dipping into the VAT or PAYE money to get through the month.
3️⃣ Creditor letters stop saying “reminder” and start setting deadlines.
4️⃣ The management accounts arrive late, because you would rather not look at them.
5️⃣ Your invoice finance advance is quietly cut, or a supplier moves you to pro-forma terms.
6️⃣ A CCJ lands, and it is on the public record within days.
7️⃣ Past a certain point, the law expects you to put creditors ahead of shareholders.

One of these on its own is a wobble. Three of them is a pattern.

The difference between acting on that pattern early and waiting until something forces your hand can be the difference between saving the business and losing it.

If a few of these feel familiar, there is a two-minute screening tool that tells you where you stand. No accounts needed.

It is run by licensed insolvency practitioners and is a screening check, not a formal opinion. 👇
https://www.companydebt.com/insolvency-calculator/

"I'll just dissolve the company and walk away from the debts."It is one of the most common things a struggling director ...
28/07/2026

"I'll just dissolve the company and walk away from the debts."

It is one of the most common things a struggling director believes, and one of the most expensive to get wrong.

Striking a company off the register costs £13 and takes a form. That is exactly why it looks like the cheap way out. It isn't, unless the company genuinely has nothing left owing.

Strike-off only works cleanly when there are no debts, no outstanding HMRC liabilities, and no creditors who might object. The moment any of those exist, the £13 is not the real cost. Here is what actually happens.

Any creditor can object to the strike-off and stop it. HMRC does this routinely where there is unpaid VAT, PAYE or Corporation Tax.

Even after a company is dissolved, it can be restored to the register. An ordinary creditor has up to six years to apply. HMRC has up to twenty. Restoration puts you back exactly where you started, now with more time elapsed and more penalties attached.

Using strike-off to sidestep creditors is treated as misconduct, and the Insolvency Service can investigate the directors of a company that has already been dissolved. That can lead to disqualification of two to fifteen years.

The honest version. Strike-off is the right, cheap ending for a company that has genuinely finished and owes nothing. For a company with debts, it is not an exit. It is a delay that adds a disqualification risk on top of the debt you were trying to leave behind. The route that actually closes a company with debts is a liquidation, run by a licensed practitioner.

When strike-off works, and when it does not:
https://www.companydebt.com/liquidation/company-strike-off-and-dissolution/

If you are considering it because the company can't pay, speak to a licensed insolvency practitioner first. Free initial call, confidential, no obligation.

“It’s a limited company, so I’m not personally liable.”That may stop being true the moment you sign a personal guarantee...
23/07/2026

“It’s a limited company, so I’m not personally liable.”

That may stop being true the moment you sign a personal guarantee. ✍️

Personal guarantees are common with:
• Business loans
• Overdrafts
• Commercial leases
• Supplier credit

They allow the creditor to pursue you personally if the company cannot pay. ⚠️

Before signing, check four things:

Capped or uncapped?
Uncapped can mean the full debt, interest and legal costs.

Secured or unsecured?
A secured guarantee may be tied directly to your home or another asset. 🏠

Facility-specific or all-monies?
“All-monies” can cover every debt owed to that lender, not just one facility.

Does your spouse need to sign?
This may put jointly owned assets at risk.

Personal guarantees are not always avoidable. But they should be read, understood and negotiated before the business urgently needs the money.

Full guide:
https://www.companydebt.com/advice/the-risks-of-signing-a-personal-guarantee/

If a guarantee is already being enforced, speak to a licensed insolvency practitioner. Initial consultations are confidential and usually free.

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Wednesday 8am - 8pm
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