If the business is in trouble, start here

What this handbook is

Nine lessons. Read them in order if the company is already in the danger zone. Jump if you already know which trap you are in.

• Warehouse brokers — how a call-centre "we'll get you funded" shop actually gets paid.
• Hidden commissions — secret fees, half-secret small print, and the cases that matter. Hopcraft in 2025 did not give every borrower a free claim. Wood in 2021 still matters when someone held themselves out as your impartial broker.
• HMRC Time to Pay — an instalment arrangement, not a loan, not a right, and not a place to hide.
• Terms that should stop the pen — all-monies, additional security on demand, a personal guarantee that never dies.
• Products that finish companies — daily sweeps, stacking, "renewals" that are just a new fee on the remaining balance.
• Directors in the danger zone — Sequana, wrongful trading, preferences, and what the minutes need to show.
• Help that is actually there — Business Debtline, licensed insolvency practitioners, HMRC, the Ombudsman. Not a lead-gen "turnaround" firm that rang you.
• Stacked debt — how the same cash gets pledged three times, and how to stop digging.

This is training, not advice on your company. If you want a file looked at, the 60-second assessment is still the door. If you want a solicitor or a licensed insolvency practitioner, go to one. Strata is a packager.

The first 48 hours

Do these in this order. Do not reverse them because a broker is on the other line.

1. Stop signing. No new facility, no "soft search" pack that is actually a full application to eight lenders, no personal guarantee "just to get the offer out". Offers that expire at 5pm on a Friday are a sales tool.

2. Write down who you already owe, and who can collect from the account without asking. Current account, invoice finance, short-term lenders with a sweep, HMRC, landlords, trade. If you cannot produce that list from memory, you are not ready to borrow more.

3. File what is unfiled. HMRC Time to Pay is not available as a hiding place behind unsubmitted VAT or PAYE. The return comes first. The arrangement, if they agree one, comes after.

4. Ring help that is free and is not selling you a product. Business Debtline is a charity. They do not cold-call. A licensed insolvency practitioner will usually give a first conversation without a fee. A warehouse broker who wants a card payment today is not help.

5. Do not pay a creditor you like ahead of one you do not, just because the first one shouted. That is how preference claims get built. Read Directors in the danger zone before you move money between related companies, clear a director's loan, or pay yourself a dividend "because we always do at month-end".

6. Ask every broker, in writing, four things before they go to market. Who is the lender. What is the product. What is every fee, including theirs. What commission the lender will pay them, in pounds. If they will not answer, you already have the answer. Read Warehouse brokers and Hidden commissions.

What "in trouble" actually looks like

It is rarely one missed payment. It is a pattern.

• VAT or PAYE is late, and a second quarter is about to be late on top of it.
• The current account is at its limit before wages.
• A short-term facility was taken "just this once" and a second one arrived to pay the first.
• A broker is now offering to "restructure" that stack — by adding a third facility.
• A statutory demand, a winding-up threat, or a field officer visit is in the post.
• Directors are putting personal cards through the company, or the other way round.
• Someone has asked you to sign a personal guarantee against the house "as comfort" for a facility measured in months, not years.

None of those is a moral failure. They are a file. The file either has a structure that can last, or it does not. Same-day money does not change the file. It changes the date of the next crisis.

What this site will not do

It will not tell you that you are eligible. It will not invent a rate. It will not name a lender you should use. It will describe structures you should walk away from, and terms that should make you put the pen down. It will name the courts' actual decisions, with citations, so you can read them rather than a thread.

Strata packages UK SME distress-refinance files. We do not lend. If a lesson here conflicts with advice from your solicitor or a licensed insolvency practitioner, theirs wins. They can see your numbers. This page cannot.

How to use the self-checks

Each lesson ends with questions. They are not a diagnostic and they are not stored. Nobody is scoring you. They exist because directors remember the thing they got wrong in a quiz more clearly than a paragraph they skimmed. Wrong answers have an explanation. Read it.

Then go back to the list. If HMRC is the loudest creditor, start with Time to Pay. If a broker is the loudest voice, start with warehouse brokers. If you have already signed three short-term facilities, start with stacked debt and then the terms lesson, because the next document in your inbox is trying to make the hole permanent.

Once you have worked through what applies to you, if a refinance is still the right next step, that is what Strata packages — one file, HMRC dealt with first, no stacking. We do not lend, and we will not tell you that you are eligible before we have seen the numbers. But if the file can support a structure that lasts, we know how to build it and who can hold it.