Summary

Clarification on when the court should lift the administration moratorium in respect of litigation.

The Facts

Introduction

Amit has recently acted for an IP whose office is one of the largest appointment takers in the country. He appeared for the respondent at several hearings on an application to review a BTO.

Background

The out-going officeholder had his licence revoked by the IPA for misappropriation of monies, running to six figures, from numerous estates. This resulted in a BTO, which was granted by the Court on paper.

The Facts

The applicants, who had successfully appealed the rejection of their proof of debt by the liquidator of Burnden Group Limited, sought an order that the liquidator pay their costs of the appeal personally in circumstances where the relevant company had no assets and their costs exceeded £290,000 (including VAT).

The Decision

As well as the new Insolvency Rules coming into force on 6 April, there are over 100 amendments to the Insolvency Act that will come into force as well. These amendments are provisions from the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 ("SBEEA") and the Deregulation Act 2015 ("DA"), and are designed to facilitate and run alongside the new Rules.

Applications to Set Aside a Statutory Demand

Set Aside Applications were previously governed by rules 6.4 and 6.5. They are now governed by Rules 10.4 and 10.5.

Rule 10.4 - Application to Set Aside Statutory Demand

In summary, Rule 10.4 provides that a debtor may, after having been served with a Statutory Demand, make an application to court to have it set aside.

Disclaimer - Rules 19.1 - 19.11

The Rules relating to Disclaimer remain largely unchanged, except for bankruptcy and liquidation being included in the same section and some minor updates to the Act. The deadlines for all actions remain unchanged.

19.8 - Application for permission to disclaim in bankruptcy (section 315(4))

The notes in this section refer to changes within the Act as amended by the Deregulation Act 2015 and the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.

MVL's are dealt with in Part 5, chapters 1 and 2 of the new rules so, if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin.

r.5.1 sets out the additional requirements to those in s.89 IA

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:

Expedited petitions

The Court of Appeal in Harvey v Dunbar Assets plc [2017] EWCA Civ 60 has confirmed that parties cannot re-litigate failed arguments that have previously been presented in bankruptcy proceedings.

This will be welcome news for creditors in situations where debtors rehearse the same arguments at several stages of the bankruptcy process in an attempt to deter enforcement by driving up legal costs and drawing out proceedings.

The facts