Company Rescue & Recovery Hub

You did not arrive at this page because everything is fine.

You arrived because the cash flow forecast you built in January has run out, the largest supplier is on stop, and the accountant said something about “a CVA” without naming when one works and when one wastes nine months of your life.

Rescue and recovery are not the same thing. Rescue is what you reach for while the company is still trading, when there is still a board, a payroll run, and a forecast worth fighting for.

Recovery is what comes after, sometimes the day after a CVA contribution clears, sometimes a year after a clean closure when the next venture needs credit lines that the last one closed.

This hub sits one level above the procedures. The company rescue solutions hub covers CVA, Administration, and Pre-Pack as a procedure menu.

This page sits one rung up: it joins the pre-formal options that try to avoid procedures altogether, the formal procedures themselves, and the post-formal recovery work that decides whether you trade again, lend again, and direct again.

We are direct about the trade-off because the literature is not. Most rescue content treats “rescue” as a single move and stops at procedure choice.

In our referral-network casework, the decisions that bite hardest are the ones either side of the procedure: the informal call you should have made six weeks earlier, and the credit application you make eighteen months later when the new lender pulls the Companies House filing.

Company Rescue and Recovery at a Glance

What This Rescue and Recovery Hub Covers

This hub maps the full arc, not the procedure menu.

It covers three layers: pre-formal moves to avoid Insolvency Act 1986 machinery altogether, the formal procedures that take over when informal moves run out, and the post-formal recovery work that decides whether the next eighteen months go cleanly.

Each cluster names what the family solves, where it stops, and the dedicated guide that sets out the mechanics.

We do not duplicate the spokes here; we point you at the family that fits the pressure on your desk this week, and we keep our own commentary tight enough that the spoke does the heavy lifting.

Who This Rescue and Recovery Hub Is For

You are most likely a director of a UK limited company between £200k and £10m turnover, looking at management accounts that no longer match the bank balance.

You may have already had one HMRC reminder, one supplier letter, and one quietly worried call with your accountant.

You may also be on the other side of a procedure already: a CVA in year two, a phoenix company that needs trade credit, a strike-off you want reversed because a debtor surfaced after dissolution. The hub serves both seats.

If you are a creditor of a company in a rescue or recovery process, the spoke pages on Company Voluntary Arrangements and Administration set out your voting and proof-of-debt rights. This hub assumes the director’s seat.

How to Use This Rescue and Recovery Hub

Read the cluster summaries first. If you can already name the family that fits, jump straight to the spoke.

If you cannot, scroll to “Rescue and Recovery by Situation” and find the row that matches what is actually on your desk this Friday: the supplier on stop, the petition advertised, the post-CVA contribution that just bounced, the strike-off you need to undo.

Company Debt’s editorial team curates the spoke library, and the rescue specialists triage the same families daily.

The pattern we see is that directors spend three weeks researching procedures and twenty minutes on the post-procedure recovery, when the real cost of getting the recovery wrong is often larger than the rescue itself.

Key Company Rescue and Recovery Guides

Three families do most of the work on this hub. The pre-formal cluster covers the moves that try to avoid the Insolvency Act 1986 altogether. The formal-procedure cluster covers the statutory routes when those informal moves run out.

The post-formal cluster covers the recovery work after a procedure closes, which is the part most rescue content forgets to write.

Pre-Formal Rescue: Negotiation, Refinancing and HMRC Time to Pay

This is the cluster we point you at first. Time to Pay with HMRC, an extended payment plan with the largest unsecured supplier, an asset-based refinance against the debtor book, a director loan top-up where the personal exposure is acceptable.

None of it triggers a Companies House filing. None of it sits on a credit file in the same way an Administration does.

The cost is exposure. Informal arrangements bind nobody. One angry creditor with a £750-plus undisputed debt and the £352 winding-up petition fee in their pocket can collapse a plan the other ten creditors were happy with.

Pre-formal rescue works when the pressure is genuinely narrow and the underlying business is profitable; it stops working the moment a petition is advertised.

This family fits when the cash gap is one large invoice, one slipped contract, or one HMRC quarter behind. It does not fit when three creditors are already chasing in parallel.

Formal Procedures: CVA, Administration and Pre-Pack

When informal options run out, the Insolvency Act 1986 takes over.

A Company Voluntary Arrangement binds unsecured creditors to a reduced repayment plan over three to five years on a 75% creditor approval by value, and the directors stay in the chair.

Administration under Schedule B1 imposes a statutory moratorium and hands control to a licensed insolvency practitioner who restructures or sells the viable parts.

Pre-Pack Administration is the variant where the sale is negotiated before appointment and completed on day one.

The procedure menu is where most rescue content stops.

We treat the honest comparison as friction-first: the CVA preserves director control but rigidly polices monthly contributions; Administration loses control but stops creditor action immediately; a Pre-Pack saves value but invites scrutiny when the buyer is connected.

Each is the right answer for a different pressure profile, and the wrong answer for the others.

For the procedure-level mechanics, the company rescue solutions hub is the right next click. For the trade-offs each procedure forces, the spoke library covers CVA pros and cons and CVA versus liquidation in detail.

Post-Formal Recovery: Phoenix Discipline, Restoration and Returning to Credit

The procedure closes. The recovery does not. A CVA in month fourteen still needs a working forecast, a phoenix company needs trade credit lines built from scratch, a struck-off company needs court restoration when a debtor surfaces a year later.

This cluster is the one most directors underweight.

Phoenix discipline matters because section 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 restricts re-use of a similar trading name for five years after liquidation, and breaches are criminal.

Restoration after strike-off requires a Companies House application within six years and exposes whatever debts were quietly written off when the company dissolved.

Returning to credit after Administration usually means twelve to eighteen months of trade-credit-only operation before any high-street lender reopens a facility.

For the post-CVA discipline that protects the rescue, see how directors keep the contributions working when the procedure has already begun, including what happens when a CVA fails.

Where redundancies become unavoidable inside the procedure, the rules at making employees redundant in a CVA apply.

Company Rescue and Recovery by Situation

Most directors arrive at this hub from a specific pressure point, not a procedure preference. Find the row that matches the pressure on your desk this week.

The four situations below cover most of what we see across our triage casework, and the procedure choice usually follows from the situation, not the other way round.

Early-Stress Situation: Cash Tight But No Petition

The bank balance is below one payroll cycle, an HMRC reminder is on the desk, and the largest supplier has moved to pro-forma terms. No winding-up petition has been issued.

This is the situation where pre-formal rescue is most likely to work, and where most directors mistakenly skip it because they assume formal procedures are inevitable.

HMRC Time to Pay is the obvious first call; an asset-based refinance the obvious second. A licensed insolvency practitioner will tell you, in a 30-minute call, whether the gap closes informally or whether you are buying time you cannot honour.

Late-arriving cases close cleanly too, but with a narrower menu. The personal exposure clock under section 214 IA 1986 keeps running while you decide.

Formal-Procedure-Needed Situation: Petition Threatened or Issued

A creditor has issued a statutory demand, the £352 winding-up petition fee plus the £2,600 Official Receiver deposit are no longer hypothetical, and the bank has hinted at freezing the trading account on petition advertisement.

The informal window has effectively closed.

This is where Administration earns its place: the moment a Notice of Intention is filed under Schedule B1, the moratorium engages and most creditor action stops.

A CVA can still work if the petition can be paused, but you are now bargaining under petition pressure rather than negotiating from a defensible position.

Director guarantees in a CVA become especially important here, because most personal guarantees crystallise on procedure entry.

Post-Procedure Recovery Situation: CVA Live or Strike-Off Done

The procedure is behind you, or almost.

A CVA contribution missed last quarter, a phoenix newco needs a trade-credit line opened, or a strike-off you assumed was final has surfaced a forgotten debtor and you need the company restored to chase it.

This row trips up directors who thought the procedure ended the work.

Live CVA discipline runs on monthly cash management, board minutes that record creditor-interest decisions, and an honest read on whether the contribution profile is realistic against the latest twelve-month outturn.

Where it stops being realistic, the supervisor is usually willing to vary; where the variation fails, the CVA fails, and CVL becomes the cleaner exit.

Using a CVA to close a company covers the structured wind-down route, where the CVA is run as a closure framework rather than a turnaround.

Sector-Specific Situation: Care Homes, Construction, Partnerships

Some sectors break the standard rescue maths. Care homes face CQC notification duties, resident-fee escrow questions, and local-authority placement contracts that do not unwind cleanly through Administration.

Construction faces retention claims, collateral warranties, and the contractor insolvency chain that triggers further insolvencies down the supply line.

Partnerships, including LLPs, run on different statutory machinery: the Partnership Voluntary Arrangement is the procedure equivalent of a CVA but governed by the Insolvent Partnerships Order 1994.

For partnerships and LLPs, see partnership voluntary arrangements.

Sector-specific rescue work is one of the cases where running the procedure choice past a sector-experienced practitioner pays back several times over, because the standard playbook is wrong often enough to matter.

Company Rescue and Recovery by Risk or Procedure

Each route carries a different formality cost, a different speed, and a different impact on director control. The honest comparison runs informal to formal to post-formal, not “best to worst”.

Pick the lowest-friction route that actually solves the problem, and the recovery work is half done before it starts.

Informal Risk Profile: Cheap, Fast, Binds Nobody

Informal routes preserve director control fully, cost almost nothing in professional fees, and move within days rather than months. They also bind nobody.

A single dissenting creditor, especially one with a £750-plus undisputed debt and the £352 winding-up petition fee in their pocket, can torpedo a plan the rest of the creditor list approved.

Informal works when the pressure is narrow and the creditors are commercial. It does not work when one creditor is feeling personally aggrieved or when HMRC has moved beyond the Time to Pay desk to enforcement.

The dangerous payment in this phase is the quiet one to a connected supplier, not the noisy one to a chasing creditor; section 239 IA 1986 preference claims have a six-month window for unconnected creditors and two years for connected parties.

Formal Procedure Risk Profile: CVA, Administration, Pre-Pack

The CVA binds unsecured creditors who voted, plus dissenters, once 75% by value approves. The director stays in the chair. The cost is the contribution discipline and the public Companies House filing.

Failure rates rise sharply where the contribution was set optimistically; the supervisor’s opinion on the proposed monthly figure is worth more than the director’s hope.

Administration under Schedule B1 carries the heaviest formal cost: the administrator takes control from day one. The benefit is the moratorium, the speed of a Pre-Pack sale, and the protection from creditor action.

The cost is loss of director command and the public scrutiny of any connected-party sale under the 2021 Pre-Pack Regulations. Pre-Pack saves the most value when the buyer is independent; it invites the most scrutiny when the buyer is connected.

Post-Formal Risk Profile: Phoenix Rules, Restoration, Wrongful Trading

The post-formal risks are the ones the procedure literature underweights. Section 216 IA 1986 restricts re-use of a prohibited name for five years after liquidation, and breaches are criminal.

The carve-outs (court permission, the section 216(3) sale exemption, the rule 22.4 successor-company notice) are technical enough that directors regularly fall foul of them by mistake.

Restoration after strike-off involves a Companies House application within six years and exposes whatever debts were quietly written off at dissolution.

Wrongful trading exposure under section 214 IA 1986 does not end at procedure entry;

the liquidator’s investigation looks back at the months before, and the cleanest defence is contemporaneous board minutes recording the creditor-interest test that the Supreme Court restated in BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA [2022] UKSC 25.

Your Next Step on Company Rescue and Recovery

The single most useful action a director under pressure can take this week is a 30-minute call with a licensed insolvency practitioner.

Not because every situation needs a formal procedure, but because the IP can tell you, inside that call, which of the three layers, pre-formal, formal, or post-formal, your situation actually sits in.

Where we see most directors get it wrong, they get the layer wrong before they get the procedure wrong. They reach for a formal procedure when an HMRC Time to Pay would have closed the gap.

Or they cling to informal negotiation while the petition fee is being paid. Or they exit a CVA cleanly and underestimate how long the credit-recovery work takes after.

Company Debt’s licensed IPs and rescue specialists handle that triage daily.

We assess the position, run the cash flow honestly, and either implement a formal procedure or refer you to your existing accountant for an informal route, whichever genuinely fits.

Call us free on 0800 074 6757, or use the live chat on this page, for a confidential conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Company Rescue and Recovery