ABSTRACT
The statutory demand procedure was first introduced as a method for creditors to establish evidence of their corporate debtors’ inability to pay. The Insolvency Act 1986 implemented the recommendation of the Cork Committee that the statutory demand procedure be extended to individuals to replace the ancient and complex procedure under which the creditor of an individual could present a petition to the court within three months of the debtor having committed an ‘act of bankruptcy’.1 ‘Acts of bankruptcy’ comprised a list of events thought to be indications of the debtor’s inability to meet his or her liabilities which had been added to in a piecemeal fashion over the years and still included such arcane provisions as ‘with intent to defeat or delay his creditors he does any of the following things, namely, departs out of England, or being out of England remains out of England, or departs from his dwellinghouse, or otherwise absents himself, or begins to keep house’.2 The most commonly relied on act of bankruptcy was the debtor’s failure to comply with a ‘bankruptcy notice’ requiring him or her to pay a judgment debt due to a creditor.
