ABSTRACT
The idea for this book came following the publication of the Law Commission’s Consultation Paper Registration of Security Interests: Company Charges and Property other than Land in 2002.1 This document seemed to herald the beginning of a new era for personal property security interest law in the UK.2 The Law Commission acknowledged that the time was now right for fundamental reforms to be brought in modelled on Article 9 of the US Uniform Commercial Code. The Law Commission’s Consultation Paper set out proposals that, at that time, seemed likely to become law when the government finally got around to introducing reforming company law legislation following the earlier Company Law Reform Project.3 Although the Commission’s proposed scheme to implement law reform was not ideal, based on a dual strategy of implementing reform first for companies via a new Companies Act to be followed, at a later date, by reform for other categories of debtor, it did at least seem to offer the real prospect of fundamental reform to this area, which had been crying out for reform since the publication of the Crowther Report in 1971.4 It was on this basis that the authors of the chapters in this collection undertook their commissions. However, the reform project was beset by delays and problems and, rather than publishing a final report, the Commission was forced to publish a second consultation paper in 20045 before its Final Report eventually appeared in 2005.6
Unfortunately, by the time the Law Commission published its Final Report in 2005, the promising ideals of reforming this area, that were manifested in their 2002 Paper, had gone and a more limited scheme based on the pragmatic reality of getting City practitioners to agree to reform was produced. Sadly, even the more limited reform scheme of 2005 was ultimately rejected by the government when the
1 See Law Commission Consultation Paper No. 164 (London, TSO, 2002). 2 The Scottish Law Commission was also working on a similar project at this time; see
Scottish Law Commission Discussion Paper 121 Registration of Rights in Security by Companies (Edinburgh, TSO, 2002).
