Rating and Valuation (S.I., 2009, No. 204)

These regulations and provisions are already in place, and 67 companies have agreed a schedule of payments that will allow them to spread their backdated liabilities over up to eight years. The insolvency question, for those companies, will involve a combination of having to book the liability—the outcome will, in part, depend on their existing assets and liabilities—and of the judgment that the directors take on their ability to trade through the period and meet the liabilities when they become due. That is the advantage of being able to identify those liabilities and see when they will fall due, and to spread them so that they are due not as one hit—as would happen without these regulations—but in instalments over eight years. That is an unprecedented period; it gives businesses a generous amount of time to pay.