Following an 18-month consultation, the proposals suggested giving creditors three days’ notice to challenge a deal.

Even then, the general consensus was that the proposal was too weak and too late – but hey, beggars can’t be choosers and there was a sense of relief that at least the pre-pack problem was finally on the government’s radar and something – a small something, admittedly – was going to be done.

Alas, last week those hopes were dashed.

The reasons for canning the proposal are at best nonsensical and at worst bizarre. Basically, even though it recognises that phoenix companies are a problem, because the government has promised to lift the legislative burden on small and micro businesses, it apparently can’t really justify adding more regulations.

Of course, we’re lucky in print in that we have a tight-knit community of suppliers and printers that is the proud owner of an impressive set of jungle drums, so it’s virtually impossible for a company to emerge from the phoenix flames unnoticed. And as a result, the instances of directors repeatedly or callously using pre-pack administrations to simply dump debt are thankfully becoming few and far between.

However, it does still happen and there’s nothing to say that we won’t see a spike in the future, so canning the changes is a massively missed opportunity to not only prevent the dodgy phoenixes, but – just as importantly – give the genuine deals a clean bill of health.

– PrintWeek editor Darryl Danielli