There are changes to the Act mainly designed to bring in the required changes following the abolition of physical meetings in the first instance.

Approval is now by a creditors decision making procedure namely -

1. Correspondence;
2. Electronic Voting; or
3. Virtual Meeting.

Contents of the Proposal

Any proposal must comply with the general principles set out in rule 8.2I IR2016 -

[Note: deemed consent cannot be used to decide on remuneration, or where the Act/Rules requires a decision by a decision procedure.]

The Deemed Consent procedure is set out in sections 246ZF (corporate insolvency) and 379ZB (personal insolvency) of the Insolvency Act 1986, as inserted by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, and rule 15.7 of the Insolvency Rules 2016.

The deemed consent procedure is that relevant creditors/contributories are given notice:

Rules 18.15 to 18.38 of the Insolvency Rules 2016 deals with remuneration principles, fixing of remuneration, challenges by creditors and applications to Court by officeholders in relation to their remuneration placing all the rules surrounding remuneration in one place as opposed to dotted around the various procedures in the old rules.

Principles

Rule 18.16 sets out the general principles as to how administrators, liquidators and trustees can be remunerated and is largely unchanged from the old rules.

This briefing note addresses the effect of the Insolvency Rules 2016 ("Rules") to the: (i) Electronic delivery of documents; and (ii) use of Websites to deliver documents.

Consolidation of the Rules

The Rules in relation to Electronic delivery of documents and use of websites have been applied as follows, namely:

The Appeals process is governed by Rules 12.59; 12.61 and Schedule 11. The old corresponding provisions were Rules 7.47 and 7.49A.

The major change to the provisions is that there is now clarification on appealing decisions made by District Judges. The new rules provide that these appeals will now lie either to a High Court Judge in a District Registry or a Registrar in Bankruptcy at the High Court. This was previously the case, but was only inserted into the old rules by way of an Amendment - they now come fully under the scope of the rules.

The out of Court appointment processes are broadly similar to the processes under the Insolvency Rules 1986 with some minor amendments. The most significant change is the abolition of the prescribed forms for appointment documents.

Whatever type of appointment (out of Court by company/directors, out of Court by Qualifying Floating Charge Holder ("QFCH"), application to Court), the Consent to Act form and contents is dealt with by r3.2.

Appointment out of Court by directors/the Company

Applications

Rule 12 sets out rules relating to applications, (excluding administration applications, winding up petitions and creditors' bankruptcy petitions) including:

Expedited petitions

Schedule 5 of the new rules provides some clarifications on the calculation of time periods:

1. Days - CPR 2.8(1) applies meaning that a period of time expressed as a number of days means clear days, meaning you do not count the day on which the period begins, and the if the end of the period is defined by reference to an event, the day on which that event occurs.

An update on the changes to CVA's brought about by the introduction of the New Rules.

1. CONSOLIDATION OF THE RULES

1.1. The New Rules applicable to CVA's are found at rules 2.1 to 2.45 of the New Rules, (formerly found between 1.1 to 1.55 of the Insolvency Rules 1986 ("IR86")). There has been an element of consolidation of IR86 applicable to CVA's and relating to: