Safe harbour is not a shield you pick up after the fact. It protects directors who were already doing the work, and the evidence has to exist before anyone asks for it.

What we are usually asked to do

We advise boards, directors and creditors through solvency pressure, from the first warning sign to a formal appointment.

• Safe harbour plans and the records that support them

• Voluntary administration and deeds of company arrangement

• Solvent wind-downs and creditor negotiations

• Defence of insolvent trading and director penalty claims

How we run it

These matters move in days. Directors get a clear position on their personal exposure at the first meeting, not after a month of investigation.

Where an appointment is unavoidable we prepare for it properly, so the board is not making the decision in a single afternoon.

What usually goes wrong

Directors wait for certainty before they act. Safe harbour protects the ones who acted while things were still uncertain.

• No contemporaneous record of the turnaround plan or who signed off on it

• Continuing to incur debt without testing it against the alternative

• Appointing an adviser after the window for safe harbour has closed

How we are engaged

We take these on at short notice and do not need a month to form a view. Directors have a written position on their personal exposure inside the first week, and we tell you plainly when the answer is that an appointment is the better outcome.