Perrin Myddelton in administration: what clients should do

Administrators have been appointed to Perrin Myddelton Limited, the Harpenden firm of solicitors at 10 Waterside, Station Road. The appointment took effect on 10 August 2026 and was published in the London Gazette two days later. The firm employed an average of 26 people in its last reported financial year.

The notice is the official record and it is short on interpretation, so here is what it actually says, what the company’s own filings show, and, more usefully if you are a client, what does and does not change today.

What the notice records

The appointment was made in the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, under court number CR-2026-005919. The administrators are Sean Bucknall and Nicholas Simmonds of Quantuma Advisory Limited, of 3rd Floor, 37 Frederick Place, Brighton, and the company’s registered office is in the process of being changed to Quantuma’s address. The notice gives a contact for enquiries: Adam Stenning at Quantuma on 01273 322424. (The Gazette, notice 5189447, 12 August 2026)

The company’s nature of business is recorded as solicitors, its registered and principal trading address as 10 Waterside, Station Road, Harpenden, AL5 4US, and its company number as 10359524.

What the filings showed before this

Perrin Myddelton Limited was incorporated on 5 September 2016 and its last filed accounts cover the year to 31 March 2025. They are filleted small-company accounts, so no profit and loss account was delivered to Companies House and no audit was required, but the balance sheet and notes carry three figures worth reading.

The company recorded net assets of £372,342 at 31 March 2025, up from £309,655 a year earlier. Debtors stood at £1,750,753, against creditors of £1,068,980 falling due within a year and a further £356,616 falling due after more than a year. And it employed an average of 26 people during the year, down from 27. On the face of that balance sheet the company was solvent sixteen months ago.

One other filing is on the public record. On 24 October 2024 the company registered a fixed and floating charge over all its assets in favour of HSBC UK Bank plc, and that charge is still shown as outstanding. An earlier Barclays charge from March 2018 was satisfied in full in February 2025. A charge is a lender’s security, not a sign of distress in itself, but it determines who ranks where if a business is wound down.

What administration is, and what it is not

Administration is a formal insolvency procedure in which control of a company passes to licensed insolvency practitioners. It is not liquidation and it is not the same as a firm being closed down by its regulator. Administrators can trade a business on, sell it, or wind it down, and which of those happens here is not yet on the record.

Two things were still true when we checked on 14 August. Perrin Myddelton Limited remains on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s register of licensed bodies, licence number 646401, granted on 1 May 2018, licensed for rights of audience, conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate and the administration of oaths. And Companies House still shows the company as active, with no administration filing yet recorded against it. Companies House routinely lags the Gazette by days or weeks, so that is a timing gap rather than a contradiction.

What it means for you

If the firm is holding your money. Money in a solicitor’s client account is not the firm’s money. SRA rule 4.1 requires firms to “keep client money separate from money belonging to the authorised body”, and rule 5.1 allows withdrawals only for the purpose the money is held for or on the client’s instructions. (SRA Accounts Rules) That protection is the reason a solicitors’ insolvency is not the same as an ordinary company failure for the people who have paid it deposits.

If you have a live matter. A conveyancing chain, a probate file or a court deadline does not pause because administrators have been appointed. The published contact point for enquiries is the one in the Gazette notice, Quantuma on 01273 322424. If you have a completion date or a court date in the next few weeks, ask in writing who is now handling your file and get the answer in writing.

If the firm holds your will or your deeds. These are your documents. If a firm closes and the SRA has to step in, its archive team takes control of documents relating to closed matters, including copies of deeds and wills, and clients can request them back. The SRA charges no fee for that, aims to deal with requests within eight weeks, and notes that the minimum retention period for a client file is seven years from the date the matter concluded. None of that has been triggered here, but it is the route if it is.

If you want to check the position yourself. The SRA’s register is the authoritative record of whether a firm is authorised, and it changes before anything else does. The Gazette carries every statutory insolvency notice. Both are free.

Under the Insolvency Act 1986, an administrator must make a statement setting out proposals for achieving the purpose of the administration and send a copy to the registrar of companies and to every creditor. That statement, when it reaches the Companies House record, is where the future of the practice and the jobs there will first be set out in public. We will update this page when it does.

Anyone with a residential conveyancing matter caught up in this may also want our St Albans and Harpenden house prices page, which sets out what is actually selling in AL5 and at what price.