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 recent Court of Appeal case of JCAM Commercial Real Estate Property XV Limited v. Davis Haulage Limited [2017] EWCA Civ 267 has set out the importance of there being a settled intention to enter administration and indicated that this is a pre-requisite to an out of court appointment being validly made.

The Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 come into effect in November 2016; we wrote how the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 (the “2016 Rules”) were laid before Parliament on 25 October 2016 (http://tinyurl.com/kcy2723).

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

Speed Read:The recent decision of R v Neuberg serves to further entrench the distinction between the two classes of offences for determining benefit under the confiscation regime.Natasha Reurts provides an overview of the decision and assess the implications for corporate and financial crime cases that follow.

Case Summary

Background

The insolvency service has published the latest figures for complaints against insolvency practitioners made to the Complaints Gateway during 2016. The statistics indicate that the Gateway has received a reasonably steady level of complaints since it was established in 2013 but promisingly for practitioners the Gateway does appear to be weeding out more complaints with the Gateway having rejected 29% of complaints in 2016, compared to 18% in the Gateway's first year.

The Stats

Background

Part 15 Insolvency Rules 2016 consolidates the rules in relation to notices, voting rights, exclusions and appeals introducing some much needed consistency between the different insolvency processes. Most of the changes are minor, but the new Rules also introduce two radical changes:

1. The abolition of physical meetings as the default decision making mechanism in all insolvency processes, and

2. New decision making procedures (including deemed consent which will be covered in next week's update.)