If you’re owed money by a company and are considering legal action, you may wish to investigate whether others, in a similar position, have already issued a winding up petition.

Alternatively you may be here because you are a director worried that a winding up petition has been issued against your company, because you have been alerted to this by a creditor, customer or supplier. If this is the first you know about a winding up petition, something will have gone seriously wrong with the process and you will need to take action urgently.

How to Finding Out if a Winding Up Petition Has Been Issued?

(1) Search the London Gazette

The Gazette is the official journal of public record and all winding up petitions must be advertised here. You can see their full list of insolvency notices via this link.

It’s important to realise that the law only stipulates the petition must be advertised a minimum of 7 days before the hearing. The WUP may actually have been issued quite sometime prior to that, so by the time it appears there is little time left to try and stop it.

(2) Visit the Companies Court

This specialist court, located within theChancery Division of the High Court of Justice is where all winding up petitions are heard. You can see their daily list of cases here, though of course that won’t help you if you’re trying to find out if the petition has just been issued.

Instead, you can visit the court yourself and use the public terminals to look through a complete list of winding up petition that have been issued.

7 Rolls Buildings
Fetter Lane
London
EC4A 1NL

Help and advice if a winding up petition has been issued against your company

If you discover that a winding up petition has been issued against your company, we can help. If the petition has been advertised you may find that other creditors join the petition and/or that customers or suppliers will not deal with you. You may still have some options in the period before the petition is heard, which may include negotiating or voluntarily liquidating your business to avoid compulsory liquidation. You may also have legal grounds to challenge the petition if the first you know of it is by checking yourself or via a 3rd party. Please do get in contact.