Company liquidation but still effectively trading as the same company

[Toomanycats99]

Any advise. I had some building work done and had a 20 year guarantee for the work on roof. I have a leak and so 2 years on have gone back to the company who tell me they are liquidated cannot help.

Bear in mind that they are still trading under effectively the same name (minor tweak) have the same website email and phone number.

I also find that the co party named on the guarantee claims they never did the work (was pp'd on their behalf by the building company.

Any suggestions for What I can do.....

In all honesty,nothing , if as it was a limited company that has gone into formal liquidation

Check on Companies House (it's a gov.uk website). You'll probably find that the old company are registered under one number, and have been liquidated/dissolved; and this is a new company, very similar name (or even identical if they've changed the name of the old company) but registered under a different number.

As previous poster said, nothing you can do apart from spread the word on social media that the work done by "former company" is shoddy. Leave it to others to make the link to the new company, without directly accusing them of anything.

It's just so frustrating they can skip out on their responsibilities like this - apart from a minor change in name they are the same company!

This is why only insurance backed guarantees from builders are worth anything.

There have been some efforts to clamp down on Phoenixism but probably not enough. I think there was some legislation to catch people who dissolve one company then carry on the exact same business under a new company (ie Phoenixism) but I'm not sure off the top of my head what the consequences and remedies were. Might only have been to stop people avoiding tax.

Might be worth contacting trading standards / Cab about them if they're doing it to avoid compliance rather than for sound commercial reasons?

It's quite common in house building to have a company for each project and dissolve it after completion.

Check the guarantee document very carefully. Sometimes they are backed by a guarantor institution, some kind of body like the NHBC for house construction and then you claim against that separate guarantor.