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Section 183: Effect of execution or attachment (England and Wales).

Insolvency Act 1986 · 1986 c. 45View on legislation.gov.uk

Part IV: Winding Up of Companies Registered under the Companies Acts — Chapter VIII: Provisions of General Application in Winding Up

Where a creditor has issued execution against the goods or land of a company or has attached any debt due to it, and the company is subsequently wound up, he is not entitled to retain the beneift of the execution or attachment against the liquidator unless he has completed the execution or attachment before the commencement of the winding up.

However—

if a creditor has had notice of a meeting having been called at which a resolution for voluntary winding up is to be proposed, the date on which he had notice is substituted, for the purpose of subsection (1), for the date of commencement of the winding up;
a person who purchases in good faith under a sale by the enforcement officer or other officer charged with the execution of the writ any goods of a company on which execution has been levied in all cases acquires a good title to them against the liquidator; and
the rights conferred by subsection (1) on the liquidator may be set aside by the court in favour of the creditor to such extent and subject to such terms as the court thinks fit.

For purposes of this Act—

an execution against goods is completed by seizure and sale, or by making of a charging order under section 1 of the Charging Orders Act 1979;
an attachment of a debt is completed by receipt of the debt; and
an execution against land is completed by seizure, by the appointment of a receiver, or by the making of a charging order under section 1 of the Act above-mentioned.

In this section "goods" includes all chattels personal; and "enforcement officer" means an individual who is authorised to act as an enforcement officer under the Courts Act2003.

For the purposes of this section, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is to be regarded as having attached a debt due to a company if it has taken action under Part 1 of Schedule 8 to the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015 (enforcement by deduction for accounts) as a result of which an amount standing to the credit of an account held by the company is—

subject to arrangements made under paragraph 6(3) of that Schedule, or
the subject of a deduction notice under paragraph 13 of that Schedule.

This section does not apply in the case of a winding up in Scotland.

About this text

This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.