Insolvency

Leave to act as director - original application to be made in same court as winding up proceedings - appeal from district judge to High CourtIn re Britannia Homes Centres Ltd.: ChD (Mr Richard Mawrey, QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge): 7 June 2000

The respondent was disqualified from acting as a director in the course of winding up proceedings of a company registered in Northampton.

In the course of these proceedings, he was granted leave by the district judge of the Northampton County Court to act as a director of another company registered in London.

The official receiver appealed on substantive and procedural grounds.Guy Newey and Andrew Westwood (instructed by Howes Percival, Norwich) for the applicant.Held, allowing the appeal, that an appeal from a decision of a district judge in leave applications was to a single judge of the High Court; that s.17(1) of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, which provided that applications for leave had to be made to the court which had power to wind up the company, did not apply where an application for leave was part and parcel of existing winding up proceedings; that in those cases the appropriate court was the court where the winding up and disqualification proceedings were taking place; that there was no rational basis for the district judge to have granted the respondent leave to act as a director.