The Alton joinery firm went into creditors' voluntary liquidation on 20 July with £3.89 in the bank and £30,304 owed, £22,729 of it to HMRC.

Hampshire Garden Structures Ltd, the Alton joinery firm registered at Charwell House on Wilsom Road, has gone into creditors’ voluntary liquidation with £3.89 in the bank and debts of £30,304.79, three quarters of the money owed to the taxman. The winding up was resolved at a general meeting on 20 July, and the company’s statement of affairs, filed at Companies House on 6 August, sets out exactly where the money went.

The statement, signed on 9 July by David Compton, the company’s sole shareholder, lists four creditors: HM Revenue and Customs is owed £12,033 in VAT and a further £10,696 in corporation tax, timber merchant Lawsons Timber is owed £6,100, and Norfolk-based Superior Products UK Ltd is owed £1,475.79. Against that, the company declared £3.89 of cash at bank, plant and machinery of uncertain value, and an estimated total deficiency of £30,300.90. Any claims from employees are recorded as uncertain.

Darren Edwards of Exigen Group Limited, trading as Liquidation Centre in London, was appointed liquidator by the members and creditors on 20 July, with the notices published in the London Gazette on 29 July.

Bar chart of Hampshire Garden Structures Ltd creditors from the statement of affairs as at 9 July 2026: HMRC VAT £12,033, HMRC corporation tax £10,696, Lawsons Timber £6,100, Superior Products UK £1,476, against cash at bank of £3.89
Graphic by Petersfield Online.
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A seven-year run

Companies House records show Hampshire Garden Structures was incorporated on 22 May 2019 and classified under the manufacture of builders’ carpentry and joinery. It filed micro-company accounts, most recently for the period to 1 January 2025, and survived an earlier brush with the register when a compulsory strike-off begun in July 2023 was discontinued the following month.

A creditors’ voluntary liquidation is the route a company’s own shareholders take when it cannot carry on paying its debts: the liquidator collects what the company owns and shares it out among the people it owes. It is a formal insolvency process, not a finding of wrongdoing by anyone involved.

What it means for you

If the company owes you money, whether a deposit on a garden building, an unfinished order or an unpaid invoice, you are a creditor and can register a claim with the liquidator. The Gazette notice gives the liquidator as Darren Edwards of Exigen Group Limited, Warehouse W, 3 Western Gateway, London E16 1BD. Registering costs nothing, but with £3.89 of declared cash and machinery of uncertain value, the statement of affairs leaves little prospect of unsecured creditors being paid in full.

The figures are also a reminder of who the biggest creditor usually is when a small firm folds: HMRC’s £22,729 across VAT and corporation tax dwarfs what the two trade suppliers are owed.

It has been a hard summer for established east Hampshire businesses: a Petersfield lettings firm was wound up by the court over the same period. More local coverage is on our news page.

Sources