Here is our summary of key developments relevant to restructuring professionals that you might have missed, with links for further information.
As the Employment Rights Act 2025 starts to bed in, and parts of the legislation are now in force, see our Insight that sets out the latest position and considerations for Insolvency Practitioners dealing with employees – many of the changes need to be thought about ahead of an appointment.
Make sure that you understand the registration requirements for residential tenancies, which are being rolled out from December 2026 – see our blog. If an insolvent estate includes a large residential portfolio, managing the required information and dealing with registration could be time consuming. Preplanning the management of that is important to comply with the requirements.
Our colleagues in the US have shared this insightful blog about developments in the states supporting small business restructuring. As for those interested in the impact that the mid-term elections in the US might have on such things as trade and investment, see this Insight.
From this side of the Atlantic, the chancellor delivered the Autumn Budget at the end of October. What caught our team’s eye was the proposal to give HMRC enhanced powers to enable it to recover money directly from a company’s bank account and introducing a requirement for businesses to set up direct debits to pay VAT and PAYE liabilities. We consider the potential impact of this on restructuring, in our blog.
The Building Safety Act continues to dominate conversation, given the reach of liability beyond just those companies involved in the construction and development sector – our Insight gives more detail. But the conversation does not stop there.
With new legislation on the horizon that seeks to widen responsibility to manufacturers who may have supplied unsafe materials, introduce group accountability where there is a failure to remedy, enable local authorities to remediate if work is not undertaken and claim costs as a debt that will be protected as a charge, this is likely to have an obvious impact on restructuring options and advice. The bill also intends to extend the situations when IPs are required to notify local regulators of their appointment, and when they are required to notify regulators that property has been disclaimed. This is certainly a space to keep a careful eye on.
Restructuring plans remain out of grasp for many mid-market companies given the cost and potential for challenge (and therefore more cost). For mid-market companies, both HMRC and landlords are the most likely challenger creditors – as they tend also to be on CVAs. There have, however, now been a few RPs where the court has crammed down an RP on dissenting landlords which has led us to consider: Is there a different approach to landlord creditors under an RP compared to a CVA?
Is £1 million enough? The Pensions Regulator was granted several new powers by the Pension Schemes Act 2021, including the power to issue financial penalties of up to £1 million in certain circumstances. In this blog, our pension colleagues ask whether £1 million is enough? Why is this relevant to IPs – see here.
In other news, the court structure has recently changed with the Business and Property Division (BPD) replacing the Chancery Division. Court headings will be different; there will be a new BPD guide (expected in November) that will govern court applications, and judgments will be cited in a different way. For IPs there should not be much change in practice, other than things might look different and there has been changes to the ce-file system to reflect the modernised system.
The consultation on the Insolvency Rules Review closed last month, with many firms and industry bodies (R3, the IPA, UK Finance and the ILA to name a few) providing feedback to the Insolvency Service. We will find out by 6 April 2027, what (if any), changes the Insolvency Service might make to the rules. Given the focus in the consultation around reducing cost, adapting the rules to deal with technology and AI, as well as ironing out those rules that don’t always work in practice, we could expect a few. Other consultations that might be of interest include the consultation on Corporate Reporting. Why? Because of the suggested changes to the distributable reserves’ regime to a solvency-based model (see Para. 109 of the consultation).
HMRC updated its Insolvency Practitioner Handbook on 4 November 2026. The update deals with how to treat PAYE in insolvency, including guidance on what you need to do when you keep staff in employment through insolvency, how to apply PAYE to distributions to employees and how to set up Employment Protection Act schemes.
The Supreme Court confirmed in Drelle v Servis-Terminal LLC early this year that an unrecognised and unregistrable foreign judgment for a debt or definite sum can give rise to a common law obligation to pay, and can constitute a “debt” for a bankruptcy petition. However practitioners must still assess whether the foreign judgment is genuinely disputed on bona fide and substantial grounds. The Court of Appeal has recently decided (the case being sent back to the Appeal Court to consider the position) that the foreign judgment was substantially disputed in this case and overturned the bankruptcy order.
The collapse of Market Financial Solutions has brought with it multiple court applications. One that is worth following is the proposed distribution plan in the London Bridging Limited/Twinwin proceedings, which will be back before the court later this month. This application deals with competing claims to the same security by different funders, and it will require the court to consider complex questions about registration and trust-based arguments to determine who receives what. And in the long-running Thames Water restructuring, Thames has launched a further bridging RP to extend the maturity dates – this plan looks much less contentious than first time round but remains the topic of many conversations.
And finally, we have once again been recognised among the world’s leading law firms for restructuring and insolvency matters in the Global Restructuring Review's prestigious GRR 100.
If you would like specific advice on any of these issues or anything else, please contact a member of our UK Restructuring & Insolvency team.
