Company Statutory Demand Lawyers

Statutory Demands notify someone else (your debtors) that you demand immediate payment of a debt which you say is due from them. Making the demand in this form means that unless the form is dealt with in a particular way, the Courts will treat the debt as having certain consequences – that in some cases can be quite serious (therefore, persuasive). In addition, many debtors may be unfamiliar with the Statutory Demand regime, that often also adds (useful) a “shock” element to the process.

Anyone can serve a Statutory Demand, it’s just like writing a letter – there is no fee for its issue, nor anywhere that it needs to be registered.

The Courts frown on Statutory Demands being used purely as a debt-collection mechanism – the Courts treat a Statutory Demand as part of the Insolvency process, and as a result expect you to have some reason to believe the debtor “can’t pay”, i.e. rather than merely “won’t pay”. If there is a clear and genuine dispute over a debt, then the Statutory Demand should not be used. However, if a false narrative is raised to avoid payment, that may not prevent this insolvency process being pursued. Serving a statutory demand that is successfully disputed (see our “Set-aside” product, for more details) can have adverse legal costs consequences on you – i.e. there may be an element of dispute risk entailed in engaging the process.

The debt threshold applicable to companies (Winding Up Petition) is £750. This means a company Statutory Demand for less than £750 cannot be used as a basis for a winding-up petition – and therefore might have less “bite” for an informed company debtor than a demand for £750 or more.

A Statutory Demand must be served properly in order to be valid. A Statutory Demand should be served in person at the debtor’s address. We can arrange service using a process server for an additional charge of £100 + VAT. Alternatively, for no extra fee, we can simply post the demand. Often the debtor will acknowledge postal service by engaging in a dialogue after postal service, which then removes the need for a process server to be involved. If, however, the debtor fails to acknowledge service, a post served Demand would not be properly served unless service were to be acknowledged, e.g. signed-for.

We don’t generally do anything for new clients until our process of client retention has concluded – this involves agreeing the scope of what we are doing for the price (our terms are below), setting-up our client record, and producing the bill (payment in advance is required for all new clients).

After that, the production of the notice is a job that we can undertake in less than an hour once we can schedule it in our workflow, that can depend on how busy we are at any particular time. We would not usually take-on a job for which we could not engage within about a working week.

Having taken your instructions, the drafting of the documents would usually be completed within 4 days. There are, however, other forms of service that might be appropriate for different circumstances that take different amounts of time. Once a Statutory Demand has been served, the debtor will have just 18 days to respond.

Your supplier is SRA-regulated Mounteney Solicitors, that charges VAT some customers may be able to reclaim

We charge a fixed fee of £350 + VAT = £420 for producing and posting a Statutory Demand.

There is more about our fees on our website here

If you have any questions or require any further information, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us.