The rules relating to income payment orders ("IPO") and income payment agreements ("IPA") are largely unchanged. The time periods dictated in the old rules for IPOs and IPAs remain the same, however there are some added requirements in the new rules, particularly in relation to the contents of notices and orders.

Rule 10.109 Application for income payments order (section 310)

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(4) the notice to the bankrupt must be authenticated and dated by the trustee.

Rule 10.110 Order for income payments order

Whether third party claimant entitled to pre-action disclosure of currently solvent insured's insurance policy

Following obiter comments in the recent Court of Appeal decision in JCAM Commercial Real Estate XV Limited v David Haulage Limited[1]practitioners must now review their stance on the use of a Notice of Intention to Appoint Administrators (“NoI”) where there is no qualifying floating charge holder (“QFCH”). This is a blow to the flexibility of the administration process as a rescue procedure.

This case raised what is an often-discussed issue amongst insolvency practitioners and lawyers but one which, until now, has not been addressed fully by the courts, namely "does a company (or its director(s)) have to have a "settled intention" to appoint an administrator in order to file a Notice of Intention ("NOI") pursuant to paragraph 27 of Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986 ("Schedule B1")?".

This article was first published in the LexisNexis Corporate Rescue and Insolvency Journal (2017) 2 CRI 45.

Key Issues

Section 216 continues to apply to prohibit the re-use of a name or sufficiently similar name where oldco and newco have common directors.

The relevant rules now dealing with the exceptions are contained in new rules 22.1 - 22.7.

The three exceptions remain broadly the same but there are some key differences to note.

Exceptions to the prohibition

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.)

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 -