HMRC chasing you. Everyone telling you to liquidate. That's not your only option.
Your insolvency practitioner has a legal duty to your creditors. We don't. We act for you, the director. We'll tell you the truth about your situation.
Your insolvency practitioner has a duty to your creditors. Not to you.
Here's something most directors never hear until it's too late.
An insolvency practitioner has a statutory duty. By law, they have to act in the best interests of your creditors. The banks. HMRC. Suppliers.
Not you.
That's why so many calls end the same way. Liquidation. Because liquidation pays creditors fastest and earns the IP the cleanest fee.
We're not licensed insolvency practitioners. That's not a weakness. That's the whole point.
Has a legal duty to your creditors. Earns their fee from running formal procedures. Recommends what protects the creditors, not what protects you.
Has no statutory duty to your creditors. Acts for you, the director. If a rescue is viable, we show you the route. If you need a formal procedure, we'll help you find an IP who'll look at rescue routes first.
That's why this works. You get the truth about your situation from someone who doesn't earn more by closing your company.
If you wait, this is what's on the line
When a company runs out of road, the damage rarely stays inside the company. The directors who lose the most are the ones who wait the longest.
Your family home
If you've signed a personal guarantee on a loan, lease or BBL, your house is the bank's first stop when the guarantee gets called in.
Your personal credit
County court judgments. Default registers. 6+ years of damaged personal credit. The cost most directors don't see coming until they apply for a mortgage.
Director disqualification
A 2 to 15 year ban on running any UK limited company. The Insolvency Service investigates every failed company. New 2026 powers extend the reach.
Personal bankruptcy
If company debt gets personalised through a guarantee or misfeasance claim, you can be made bankrupt. 1 year of asset restrictions. 6+ years on your credit file.
15 minutes from now you'll know where you stand
Tell us what's happened
Send the letter. Share the petition. Walk us through where you are. We've seen every version of this situation. You don't need to explain how it got this bad.
We tell you the truth about your options
Not the option that pays the most fees. The option that protects you and your company. If a rescue is viable, we show you the route. If it isn't, we tell you that too.
Decide in your own time
No follow-up calls. No pressure. If you want us to act, we quote a fixed fee with a payment plan that works for you. If you don't, you've still left the call knowing more.
What we've done for UK directors
Tenable has been advising UK company directors through HMRC enforcement, creditor pressure, and winding-up proceedings for over 60 years combined.
Specialist support across every recovery pathway
Whatever's landed on your desk, we've handled it before. Here's the full scope of what we help UK directors with.
Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA)
Formal insolvency procedure allowing your company to pay creditors a reduced amount over time while continuing to trade. Our CVA specialists have achieved a 94% creditor approval rate.
- Reduce payments by up to 70%
- Continue trading while restructuring
- Legal protection from creditors
Director Protection Services
Comprehensive protection for directors facing personal liability, misfeasance claims, wrongful trading allegations, and director disqualification proceedings.
- Misfeasance claims defense
- Personal asset protection
- Disqualification defense
Emergency Business Support
24/7 emergency response for businesses facing immediate closure, winding up petitions, bailiff action, or creditor pressure. Same-day intervention available.
- Response within 2 hours
- Winding up petition defense
- Immediate crisis intervention
HMRC Debt Resolution
Expert negotiation with HMRC for tax debt resolution, Time to Pay arrangements, and penalty reductions. Over £50 million in successful settlements.
- Time to Pay agreements
- VAT and PAYE debt resolution
- Enforcement defense
Business Recovery Consulting
Strategic turnaround consulting to restore profitability and operational efficiency. Comprehensive business health assessments and recovery planning.
- Cash flow optimization
- Operational restructuring
- Performance improvement
Insolvency Advisory Services
Expert guidance on all insolvency procedures including administration, liquidation, and receivership. Clear advice on the best options for your situation.
- Administration procedures
- Voluntary liquidation
- Asset realization
Whatever's landed on your desk, we've handled it before
Directors find Tenable at different moments. Sometimes a letter. Sometimes a court date. Sometimes a phone call from the bank. Here's how we respond to the most common triggers.
What directors ask before they pick up the phone
These are the questions we hear most often on the first call. If yours isn't here, book a call and ask.
For a clean limited company debt, no. HMRC's claim sits against the company, not against you personally.
The risk is different if you've signed a personal guarantee, if there are unpaid PAYE/NI directors' loans, or if HMRC pursues a personal liability notice under specific provisions. Those routes do exist. Whether they apply to your situation depends on the detail of how the debt was incurred.
The first thing we look at on every call is whether anything has personalised the debt. If it has, we plan around it. If it hasn't, we make sure it stays that way.
The limited company structure exists to keep the company's debts separate from your personal assets. In a clean situation, the company closes and your home is untouched.
Things change when you've personally guaranteed loans, given a charge over the property, or if misfeasance is alleged. Most directors we speak to have signed one or more personal guarantees without remembering the detail. We unpack that on the first call.
For a limited company, the company is liable for its tax. You are not personally liable for company corporation tax, VAT or PAYE in the standard case.
HMRC can shift the liability to you in specific scenarios. Unpaid director's loan accounts, fraudulent or wrongful trading, and certain PAYE failures can all trigger personal liability. We look for those triggers on every call.
A winding-up petition is a legal request to a court to wind up your company. It's filed by a creditor (often HMRC) when a debt hasn't been paid.
Once advertised in the London Gazette, your bank will usually freeze the company account inside 24-72 hours. The window to act is short.
Options before the hearing include: paying the debt, agreeing a settlement, contesting the debt, or applying to administration or CVA. Which option is right depends on the specifics. We work this out on the first call.
Under the standard BBL scheme, no personal guarantee was required. The lender's recovery route is against the company.
The personal liability risk on BBLs comes from how the money was used. If a BBL was used for clearly personal purposes, or to repay other directors, that can be challenged as misfeasance. The Insolvency Service has been pursuing BBL misuse since 2023 and powers are widening in 2026.
If you used the BBL for working capital, payroll, or supplier payments, you're in the normal case. If you used some of it for personal expenses, the situation is more nuanced and worth talking through before any formal proceeding starts.
A statutory demand is a formal demand for payment. Once served, the creditor can apply for a winding-up petition after 21 days if it's unpaid.
The 21-day clock matters. Options include: settling the debt, agreeing a payment plan, applying to set the demand aside if the debt is genuinely disputed, or restructuring the underlying liability through a formal arrangement.
Do not ignore it. Statutory demands escalate fast.
Insolvency is the financial state. Liquidation is one specific procedure to deal with it.
A company is insolvent if it can't pay its debts when they fall due, or if its liabilities exceed its assets. Being insolvent doesn't automatically mean the company has to be liquidated.
Options for an insolvent company include CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement), administration, restructuring, refinancing, or in the right circumstances liquidation. Most directors are told to liquidate when other routes are still on the table.
Employees are preferential creditors. In a formal insolvency, unpaid wages up to a statutory cap, redundancy pay, and unpaid pension contributions are paid first by the Redundancy Payments Service.
In a rescue scenario (CVA or administration with continuity), employees often keep their jobs because the company keeps trading. That's one of the reasons we lead with rescue routes wherever they're viable.
Not from us. The first call is a private conversation, not a regulated process. Nothing gets filed publicly until you decide on a route.
If a formal procedure becomes the right answer, certain steps do require public filing. A CVA, for example, is registered at Companies House. At that point we walk you through exactly what becomes visible to whom, and when. Most rescue routes happen long before that stage, and most directors who call us never need to take a step that becomes public.