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Is this company going bust? 7 warning signs on the public record

The early signals a customer or supplier is in trouble, months before they stop paying.

When a company stops paying its bills, it rarely happens overnight. The warning signs usually sit on the public record for months beforehand — you just have to know where to look. Companies House, The Gazette and the insolvency registers are all free to search, and together they tell a surprisingly honest story about a business's health. Here are seven concrete signals that a company may be heading for trouble.

1. Overdue or persistently late accounts

Every UK limited company must file annual accounts with Companies House by a fixed deadline. When accounts are marked overdue, it's one of the earliest and most reliable red flags. Struggling businesses often go quiet on their filings first — either because there's no money to pay the accountant, or because the numbers are bad and nobody wants to publish them. A single late filing might be an oversight; a pattern of late or overdue accounts across several years is a behaviour worth taking seriously. This signal can appear a full year or more before any formal insolvency step.

2. A newly filed charge or mortgage (secured debt)

When a company borrows money against its assets, the lender registers a charge (sometimes called a mortgage) at Companies House. This isn't automatically bad — plenty of healthy companies use secured lending. But a fresh charge, especially from an invoice-finance provider or a short-term lender, can signal cash-flow pressure. It also matters directly to you: if the company does fail, secured creditors get paid before ordinary trade suppliers. A stack of recent charges is worth a closer look before you extend generous credit terms.

3. A Gazette insolvency notice

The Gazette is the UK's official public record, and every formal insolvency event is published there by law — winding-up petitions, administration appointments, liquidations and creditors' meetings. A winding-up petition is particularly serious: it means a creditor has asked the court to shut the company down, and it's often the point at which banks freeze the company's accounts. If a business you deal with appears in The Gazette with any insolvency notice, treat it as an urgent stop-and-check moment, not a maybe.

4. A proposal to strike off

A proposal to strike off (a "first Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off") means Companies House intends to dissolve the company — usually because it has stopped filing. Directors can also apply voluntarily to strike off a dormant company. Either way, a company being dissolved cannot be chased for debts in the normal way once it's gone, and any credit you've extended can evaporate. If you're mid-contract with a supplier who suddenly has a strike-off notice against them, act quickly: you can object to a strike-off if they owe you money.

5. Directors resigning en masse

Directors come and go for ordinary reasons. But when several directors resign in a short window — particularly the finance director or long-standing founders — it can mean people close to the numbers no longer want their name on the company. Mass resignations, a sudden change of registered office, or a flurry of officer changes just before accounts are due are all patterns that experienced credit controllers watch for. Each individual change is filed at Companies House and dated, so you can see the sequence for yourself.

6. Negative net assets in the filed accounts

If you open a company's most recent balance sheet and its liabilities exceed its assets, that's negative net assets (sometimes shown as "capital and reserves" being a minus figure). It means, on paper, the company owes more than it owns. Some businesses trade through this legitimately — with backing from a parent company or director's loans — but combined with any other signal on this list, negative net assets is a strong reason to trade cautiously, ask for payment up front, or reduce your credit exposure. The figure is right there in the accounts, filed and free to read.

7. A director with a trail of failed companies (the phoenix pattern)

Look at who runs the company, then look at their other directorships. A director whose previous companies have repeatedly gone into liquidation — sometimes with a new, near-identical business rising from the ashes each time — is showing a phoenix pattern. It's not always deliberate wrongdoing, but a history of failed companies at the same address, in the same trade, under the same person, is a serious warning. In the worst cases a director may appear on the Register of Disqualified Directors maintained by the Insolvency Service — a clear signal to walk away. Companies House links every person to all their appointments, so this trail is fully traceable.

Why these signals matter to you

The common thread is time. Overdue accounts, a rush of new charges, mass resignations and negative net assets all tend to surface months before a company actually stops paying its suppliers. By the time a winding-up notice hits The Gazette, the smart creditors have usually already tightened their terms. Reading the public record early is the difference between being a preferred creditor who got paid and an unsecured supplier left filing a claim.

You don't need to become a forensic accountant to do this. The information is all free and public — it just lives across several different registers. Before you extend credit or sign a big order, it's worth pulling these signals together in one place. You can check a company free and get a plain-English TRADE, CAUTION or AVOID verdict in seconds, or browse the companies we've checked to see how the warning signs look in practice. If a specific supplier or customer is on your mind right now, run their name through the tool before your next invoice goes out — a two-minute check today can save a written-off debt tomorrow.