Healthcare Environmental Services Limited, a waste disposal company that serviced the NHS, entered liquidation in April 2019 with debts of more than £15 million. The Insolvency Service says the collapse was preceded by asset transfers worth £2,979,383 to connected companies controlled by Garry Pettigrew and his wife, carried out as the company was losing major NHS work. On 20 August, the Court of Session disqualified Pettigrew for nine years. The order bars him from being involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company without court permission, meaning the restriction will run until 2035.
The timeline is central to the court's view of the conduct. According to the Insolvency Service, Pettigrew began moving equipment out of the business days before Healthcare Environmental Services Limited lost 17 NHS England contracts across a two-day period in early October 2018. Further contract terminations followed in December 2018. Those losses came after a September 2018 meeting with NHS and government officials to discuss allegations that waste had been stockpiled in breach of Environment Agency permit conditions. Separate criminal proceedings in Scotland over allegations of illegal storage were later dropped in October 2023, but the insolvency enforcement case continued on a different footing.
The court's finding turned on director duties during financial distress. Lord Lake said Pettigrew was in 'flagrant' breach of those duties and concluded that, while the case fell within the middle bracket for disqualification, the conduct sat at the top end of that range. In practical terms, the court treated the behaviour as serious enough to justify a lengthy ban. The issue was not simply that assets were moved. It was that they were transferred to HEG Sustainable Solutions Limited and Starryshaw Consultants Ltd, both connected companies, at a point when creditor interests had become acute and the original company was already facing severely restricted trading.
For policy readers, the clearest point is creditor protection. Once a company is close to insolvency, directors are expected to act with creditors' interests in mind rather than treating assets as available for internal rearrangement. The Insolvency Service's case was that almost £3 million was placed beyond the reach of creditors at the point the business was deteriorating. The source material identifies a further governance failure. The company's bank held a charge over all assets, so its consent was required before those assets could be transferred. The Insolvency Service says the transfers were made without that consent and despite advice from the company's accountants and solicitors that approval was needed.
The case also carries a clear public-contract lesson. Healthcare Environmental Services was part of the NHS waste disposal chain, so its failure had consequences beyond ordinary corporate loss. When a supplier in that position loses operational credibility and then enters insolvency, the effects can spread quickly across service continuity, staffing, secured lending and unsecured creditor recovery. An attempted sale of the company collapsed in December 2018 and trading ceased, with all staff made redundant. That sequence shows how procurement failure, regulatory concern and insolvency risk can combine. For contracting authorities, the wider message is that supplier oversight cannot end once a contract is signed.
Enforcement has unfolded over several years. The Insolvency Service began investigating shortly after the company entered liquidation in April 2019. Alison Pettigrew, the co-director, gave a 3.5-year disqualification undertaking in August 2021 for allowing the asset transfers to take place. Garry Pettigrew was also fined £1,000 and ordered to pay costs in June 2025 after being found in contempt of court for taking photographs of witnesses in breach of a court prohibition and then republishing material on social media. That sat outside the core insolvency finding, but it formed part of the wider court history around the case.
In plain English, the ruling is a reminder that director disqualification is not limited to straightforward fraud cases. It can follow from decisions taken in the run-up to insolvency where company property is diverted to connected parties, lender consent is ignored and creditors are left with a weaker recovery position. The Insolvency Service said it hoped the disqualification would warn other directors against putting personal interests first when insolvency is approaching. For boards, advisers and public-sector commissioners, the case is a direct compliance message: connected-party transfers, asset security and contingency planning around critical contracts need close attention before a commercial problem becomes an enforcement case.