On 27 May 2026 the Lord Chancellor made the Insolvency (England and Wales) (Amendment) Rules 2026, laid before Parliament on 28 May and due to come into force on 22 June 2026. The instrument applies to England and Wales only and, on its face, is presented as a review-and-repair exercise for the 2016 insolvency rules. Directors should not wave that away as housekeeping. In insolvency, small procedural rewrites can decide whether an appointment is evidenced properly, whether a filing is accepted without argument, and whether a request for more fees reaches the right approving body. That matters most when a company is already under pressure and every delay is being billed to the estate.
One clear theme runs through the instrument: the rules are finally being dragged out of the fax era. Fax is stripped out of the provisions on electronic delivery to or by the court, and the amended wording now states plainly that electronic delivery does not include fax. The rules also now say that where a document is delivered electronically, only one copy needs to be sent to the court. That is practical, not cosmetic. If an adviser is still talking about fax confirmations or multiple electronic copies as though they are mandatory, you are hearing old process dressed up as authority. From 22 June, the email trail matters, and directors should make sure their advisers keep it clean and complete.
The out-of-hours administration changes deserve close attention because these are often the moments when directors are at their most exposed to pressure. The amendments remove references to faxed notices, fax transmission reports and telephone numbers from the appointment machinery, and replace that old wording with a simpler evidential focus: the appointer’s hard copy of the email showing when the notice was sent. If an emergency appointment is being made outside court business hours, timing and record-keeping are now even more squarely about the email. That does not mean directors should confuse procedural speed with strategic necessity. If someone is pushing an urgent administration on the basis that ‘there is no time’, ask what alternatives have actually been tested first, including a short standstill, a sale outside insolvency, fresh funding or an HMRC time to pay arrangement. Procedure should support a decision, not force one.
The instrument also removes the obsolete term ‘registrar’ and rewrites the definition of ‘judge’ so that it points to the appropriate judge under any relevant Practice Direction, including insolvency practice directions. Linked amendments then carry that wording through the rules on transfers, block transfer orders, office copies and the performance of court functions. For most directors, that will sound remote until there is a dispute about venue, transfer or authority. But these issues are never academic once professional fees start running. If a case is being moved, grouped with other appointments or handled through a block transfer application, you are entitled to know who is making the decision and under which rule.
One monetary change is easy to overstate, so it needs plain English. Rule 10.11 raises the financial limit from £50,000 to £500,000 for presenting bankruptcy petitions in the London Insolvency District. This is about the court in which a petition is to be presented; it is not a wholesale rewriting of bankruptcy law for every case in England and Wales. It still matters to directors with personal guarantees or other personal exposure, because forum and procedure affect time, cost and how quickly pressure lands on an individual. If bankruptcy is being threatened alongside company distress, do not rely on general assumptions taken from older guides. Check which court rules now apply to the petition actually being prepared.
Other amendments are technical but still worth knowing before they create avoidable mistakes. The cross-border wording in rule 8.24 is updated so that it refers to COMI proceedings, establishment proceedings and proceedings to which the EU Regulation as it has effect in UK law does not apply. The correction to rule 10.87 also matters: where a bankruptcy began with a debtor’s application to an adjudicator, the trustee’s completion notice is to go to the official receiver, not the court. There are also smaller deletions elsewhere, including spent wording in rules 9.4, 10.36 and 18.3. Officials may describe those changes as tidying-up, and that is fair as far as it goes. But tidy drafting still matters if you are the person paying for a professional team to get the process right first time.
The part directors and creditors should watch most closely is rule 18.30 on remuneration exceeding the fee estimate. The amended rule says that if the court fixed the basis, approval to exceed the estimate goes to the court. If there is a creditors’ committee and the court did not fix the basis, approval goes to the committee. In other cases where creditors, or a class of creditors, fixed the basis, approval goes back to those creditors or that class. That may look modest, but it sharpens accountability. An office-holder, usually the insolvency practitioner controlling the case, should not be able to ask the wrong audience to wave through an overspend. If you sit on a committee, are funding a rescue or expect a return that shrinking fees can wipe out, ask a simple question: who fixed the estimate, and has the request gone back to that same decision-maker?
The explanatory note says no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Directors should read that carefully. Whitehall may see minor corrections; inside a live insolvency file, the same changes affect service, evidence, forum and fee approval. The practical message before 22 June 2026 is straightforward. Update your precedent documents, stop relying on fax-era assumptions, make sure any out-of-hours appointment is evidenced cleanly by email, and challenge any fee increase request that has not gone to the body entitled to approve it. The rules are short. The consequences of not reading them are not.