A company may be struck off the Register of Companies by application of the directors or by instigation of the Registrar of Companies. A company restoration (CR) is required to restore a company back to the Register of Companies and also to achieve other goals, such as recovering money in a company bank account.

Those of us in the legal profession that have been involved with company restorations know that it can sometimes be a long and drawn out process, and this can be for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is sometimes because documents that are posted to the Court get lost!

For a lawyer or legal adviser, this can be very frustrating as much time is spent collecting information from the client, drafting the claim form and witness statement and arranging for the client to read through and sign these.

A CR application requires that original documents are filed at the County Court at Central London, Chancery Business, which is located in the Rolls Building. (More on why that’s relevant in a moment.) So if documents are lost, the legal advisor would have to arrange for the client to sign the documents again and resend them to the Court.

However, these frustrations could be a thing of the past if the proposals of Lord Justice Briggs are put in place. Briggs LJ has recommended that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) reduce costs by implementing an online court. In his report, Briggs LJ proposes an online court for all disputes with a monetary value of £25,000 or less.

One of the responses to the proposed online court is – Do the courts services even have the technology to implement such proposals? We may be in luck, as in the Rolls Building there is a new IT system called CE File where documents can be uploaded, and this system is also in the Chancery business division. At the moment CE File is being used voluntarily by professional advisors but is set to become compulsory from April 2017.

If the proposals made by Briggs LJ together with CE File are rolled out, the implications are that documents that are sent to court for CR application will no longer be at risk of getting lost if they are uploaded to the new IT system. This is potentially very good news for many of us who often receive instructions from clients to assist with a CR application and have to advise that the process can take 3-6 months or longer.

In the meantime, until it is determined if these proposals will come to fruition, you can have a look at the steps involved in a company restoration in our infographic. Not sure if you want to have a go on your own? Our company restoration experts will work to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible for you, whether it’s on paper now, or online in the future!