HMRC, which was chasing DG Resources for a £1.1m tax debt, served the company with a winding-up petition. DG countered that the petition was incorrectly served to the company’s registered office since it used a Companies House default address, a temporary location intended to prompt companies to update their registered office details.
However, Mr Justice Marcus Smith struck out the petition, citing two main factors for his decision, in DG Resources v Commissioners for HMRC [2026] EWHC 201 (Ch). First, the irregularity was ‘a particularly serious one’, and second, ‘before the judge, HMRC put forward a defective contention that service had been regular when it was not’.
Marcus Smith J said: ‘Through the negligence of its agents, HMRC has put forward to the court below a materially false case, and obtained judgment in its favour on the back of this. Such conduct, even when unintentional, must have consequences... I reach this conclusion fully conscious that DG Resources has no substantive case against the petition. That weighs heavily, but where there is so serious a breach of due process it seems to me that this factor is insufficient to save the petition.’
Ian Austin, partner at Irwin Mitchell, representing DG Resources, said: ‘This judgment has provided clear clarification from the court that, when a default address is used for the purposes of serving a winding-up petition on a debtor, the action of service must strictly follow para 2(2) of Sch 4 of the Insolvency Rules 2016.
‘The document must be deposited at or near the default address in a way that ensures it will come to the attention of someone attending the office.’
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