Company Law · The Business and Property Courts (Insolvency and Companies List)
Fulmar Contracting Ltd (in liquidation), Re
Checked against the judgment on 9 September 2026 · how we verify
Facts
Fulmar Contracting Ltd was an umbrella company incorporated on 3 March 2021 which supplied locum doctors to NHS end users through the employment agency Fresh Recruitment Limited, trading as Fresh Medical. It paid its workers gross, deducting neither PAYE nor national insurance contributions, and failed to account to HMRC for the VAT it charged and received. HMRC presented a winding up petition on 4 August 2023 and the company was wound up on 20 September 2023, Steven Illes and Nicholas O'Reilly being appointed liquidators on 29 September 2023; Mr O'Reilly was later replaced by Andrew Duncan following a block transfer order. Dr Maria Nina Williams was paid £392,542.10 between 17 September 2021 and 12 May 2023, latterly through a company under her control, and Dr Tatyana Viner £271,205.31 between 20 August 2021 and 8 July 2022. The company and its liquidators sued each doctor separately, relying on clause 6.5 of documents said to be their contracts of employment to recover the notional overpayments, and alternatively claiming that the gross payments were transactions at an undervalue under section 238 of the Insolvency Act 1986. The respondents' application for summary judgment was dismissed by ICC Judge Mullen. The separate claims were tried together over two days in April 2026.
What did the court decide?
Four things on this page are for subscribers:
- The decision: what the court actually held
- The issues: the questions it had to answer
- The reasoning: how it got there, in its own logic
- The case history: every step, court by court
CaseLawDigest reads every judgment published on Find Case Law for England and Wales, files it by practice area, and writes a summary a practitioner can use. One weekly PDF per area, and the full archive here.
One practice area is £19 a month, and the weekly PDF lands in your inbox.
See the plans Or take the free digestOn your firm’s subscription? Set up your access. Already have an account? Sign in.