1st March 2011 - UKITA received an invitation from R3 (Association of Business Recovery Professionals) a well known trade body for insolvency and turnaround practitioners to attend a round-table discussion in the House of Commons on the 1st March.
R3 are campaigning for a change to the law so that companies who are heading towards insolvency cannot have their essential services cut off as they currently do. Apparently, under current legislation, essential services like telecoms and electricity are not allowed to suspend their services when bills remain unpaid - but many have insolvency clauses that allow them to double the price or ask for a "hostage payment" and this has a big effect on whether insolvency practitioners decide to break the company up or not.
The event was limited to 15 people and UKITA were the only IT body invited.Andrew Corbett from Head Office briefed the group about the implications of the uptake of Cloud Computing for vital data storage, applications and line-of-business IT systems. Once you are getting your office automation, accounting, CRM and line-of-business systems supplied from outside – this has become an ‘essential service’ and failure to pay a month’s rental and then getting it cut off could be as bad as losing the electricity supply.
Other attendees at the meeting included MPS, Chamber of Commerce representatives, Government Insolvency department, FT Journalist etc.
External LinksR3 to hold parliament roundtable in bid to cut pre-packs
Holding Rescue to Ransom Campaign website