On 20 August 2026 the Court of Session disqualified Garry Pettigrew for nine years after Insolvency Service proceedings linked to the collapse of Healthcare Environmental Services Limited. The former NHS waste contractor went into liquidation in April 2019 with debts of more than £15 million, and the order means Pettigrew cannot be involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company without the court’s permission, taking the ban to 2035. (gov.uk) The official account makes clear that the case turned on conduct in the period just before insolvency, not simply on a failed business model. Government guidance for directors points specifically to duties, signs of company distress and the consequences of insolvency, which is why the timing of the asset transfers mattered once HES was losing contracts and its trading position was worsening. (gov.uk)
According to the Insolvency Service, the critical period began in autumn 2018. Pettigrew started moving equipment out of HES days before the company lost 17 NHS England contracts in October 2018, and the transfers continued into December 2018 as further NHS contracts were terminated. (gov.uk) The agency said Pettigrew caused assets worth £2,979,383 to be transferred from HES to HEG Sustainable Solutions Limited and Starryshaw Consultants Ltd between October and December 2018. At that time, he and his wife were the only directors of those recipient companies, which is why the transactions were treated as transfers to connected companies. (gov.uk)
The Insolvency Service’s chronology also places the contract losses in a wider regulatory setting. HES lost major NHS contracts across a two-day period in early October 2018 after Pettigrew attended a September meeting with NHS and government officials about allegations of waste stockpiling in breach of Environment Agency permits. For public authorities buying specialist services, that sequence shows how environmental compliance concerns can quickly become a procurement and service continuity problem. (gov.uk) Another important feature is the position of the secured lender. The agency said the transfers were made without the consent of the company’s bank, which held a charge, in effect security, over all HES assets, despite advice from the company’s accountants and solicitors that consent was required. In policy terms, that places creditor protection and director decision-making at the centre of the case. (gov.uk)
Lord Lake described Pettigrew’s conduct as a flagrant breach of duty and placed it at the upper end of the relevant middle bracket for disqualification. The legal route is the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, under which the court may, and in certain insolvent-company cases must, make an order where a director’s conduct makes them unfit to be concerned in company management. (gov.uk) The Insolvency Service began investigating shortly after HES entered liquidation in April 2019. The agency had already accepted a three-and-a-half-year disqualification undertaking from Alison Pettigrew on 6 August 2021 for allowing the same transfers to take place, which shows that investigators treated the matter as a board-level governance failure rather than a simple commercial collapse. (gov.uk)
The company’s attempted sale then fell away. The proposed sale collapsed in December 2018, trading ceased and all staff were made redundant before the business entered liquidation a few months later. That sequence narrows the room for any suggestion that the transfers took place against a stable or recoverable trading position. (gov.uk) For policy readers, the case is a reminder that oversight of public contractors rarely sits with a single body. NHS commissioners were dealing with contract risk, Environment Agency concerns raised permit compliance questions, the bank had an interest in charged assets, and the Insolvency Service later examined director conduct once the company failed. The enforcement picture only makes sense when those systems are read together. (gov.uk)
The disqualification case was also separate from the criminal proceedings. Criminal proceedings brought by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service over allegations of illegally storing medical waste were dropped in October 2023, so the 2026 order rests on insolvency-related conduct and asset transfers rather than a criminal conviction on the waste allegations. (gov.uk) There was, however, an additional court finding during the civil case. Pettigrew was fined £1,000 and costs in June 2025 after being found in contempt of court for taking photographs of witnesses in breach of a court prohibition and disseminating them on social media. Taken together, the case shows the Insolvency Service using director disqualification powers in a contractor failure where public service risk, environmental regulation and creditor protection were closely connected. (gov.uk)