RSM UK appointed administrators to Reading recruitment firm TEC Partners Limited

RSM UK Restructuring Advisory LLP appointed Lee Lockwood and James Miller as joint administrators to TEC Partners Limited on 1 May 2026, bringing the Reading-based recruitment business into a formal insolvency process after more than two decades of trading.

Administration is a formal insolvency process in which licensed insolvency practitioners take control of a company to try to rescue it, sell it as a going concern, or realise its assets for creditors. The appointment was sealed by the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts in Leeds, under court number CR-2026-000467.

The company

TEC Partners Limited provided recruitment services from its registered office at 9 Greyfriars Road, Reading. Incorporated on 2 April 2004, the company traded first as ABRS Group Limited and then, from April 2009, as Bailey Group Limited before taking its current name in August 2017. Its most recent accounts, made up to 31 December 2024 and filed as total-exemption accounts, indicate it remained a small business until shortly before the collapse.

The administrators

Lockwood and Miller are both of RSM UK Restructuring Advisory LLP, whose Leeds office is handling the appointment. Lockwood holds IP number 13050 and Miller holds IP number 21290. Joint administrators are two or more insolvency practitioners appointed to act together, though either can usually act alone unless the appointment specifies otherwise. Correspondence is being conducted through RSM's Leeds office at Fifth Floor, Central Square, 29 Wellington Street, Leeds, LS1 4DL.

The directors

The directors at the time of appointment were Andrew Lloyd Bailey, who has served since April 2004, and Christopher Beech, Leigh Howard and Paul Kitley, all appointed in December 2016.

For creditors and employees

Once administrators are appointed, a moratorium takes effect under Schedule B1, paragraph 43 of the Insolvency Act 1986, which pauses most creditor enforcement action without leave of the court. Creditors cannot start or continue court proceedings against the company without the court's permission during that period.

Administrators issue statutory communications and payment instructions to known creditors in due course. Creditors wishing to evidence the amounts owed to them do so by submitting a proof of debt, the formal claim form used in insolvency proceedings to record a creditor's claim against the estate.

Customers holding paid-but-undelivered orders or deposits rank as unsecured creditors, meaning they sit behind any secured creditors and preferential creditors in the order of distribution from the estate.

Employee claims for unpaid wages, notice pay and redundancy are treated as preferential claims up to statutory limits. The Redundancy Payments Service exists to handle such claims where an employer cannot meet them, processing payments from the National Insurance Fund on behalf of eligible former employees.