Use this guide to finish your construction company’s contracts, CIS matters, retentions and equipment arrangements alongside the company closure process. The main limited-company guide explains the routes in more detail.
When a construction company can be closed
Start by checking whether your company can pay its debts. If it can, consider strike-off or members’ voluntary liquidation. If it cannot, get insolvency advice before choosing a route: strike-off does not replace insolvency proceedings.
Before applying for DS01 strike-off, allow three months without trading, selling trading stock or changing the company’s name. Selling equipment previously used by the business is different from selling trading stock; settling debts, concluding the company’s affairs and meeting statutory duties are permitted. Relevant insolvency proceedings or creditor arrangements can also prevent an application. The three-month restriction is about when you can apply, not completed dissolution.
Resolve unfinished HMRC matters, including receiving refunds, before applying. Within seven days of applying, send copies to members, creditors including contingent or prospective creditors, employees, trustees or managers of employee pension funds, and directors who did not sign. Include landlords, staff or voucher holders where the company owes them money.
Extra construction steps
Review live contracts and reconcile subcontractor, supplier and client accounts. Agree how you will settle invoices and any CIS deductions owed to HMRC, and check the terms for ending hire or finance agreements and returning plant and equipment. These are practical checks: the outcome depends on your contracts.
Check insurance cover with your insurer before ending policies, and keep your employers’ liability policy and schedule if you employed staff. Review trade accreditations and business registrations and ask each provider how closure affects your membership or certification.
CIS and HMRC
From 6 April 2026, a mainstream CIS contractor with no subcontractor payments in a month must file a nil return or notify HMRC of inactivity. If your company has stopped using subcontractors completely, tell HMRC. After the requested cessation date, no further returns are required, but outstanding returns from before that date still have to be filed.
Confirm the cessation date with HMRC and keep a record of your notification. Resolve outstanding returns, tax balances and expected refunds before applying for strike-off; if the company is insolvent, take advice on the company and creditor position.
Retentions and final payments
A construction contract can provide for part of the price to be retained after work has finished. Check your contract for when each retention becomes payable, chase money owed to your company and agree how you will deal with sums it is holding for others.
Deal with retention balances before dissolution. Money left in the company passes to the Crown when it is struck off, so keep the company open while you resolve assets and unfinished HMRC refunds.
Plant, tools, and other assets
List company-owned vehicles, tools, scaffolding, office equipment and plant, and agree how each asset will be sold, transferred or used to settle liabilities. Assets left in the company at dissolution pass to the Crown.
Check ownership and finance terms before dealing with equipment. Separate hired plant and personally owned items from company assets, and get written agreement for any return, settlement or transfer.
Finish the company paperwork
Send final statutory accounts and a Company Tax Return to HMRC and pay outstanding tax. Keep your business records and the documents showing how contracts, equipment and retentions were settled.
Insolvent construction companies
If the company cannot pay its bills, get insolvency advice before filing an application. Include unpaid subcontractors, tax balances, disputed retentions and hire or supply charges when reviewing the debts.
Creditors’ voluntary liquidation or another insolvency route may be appropriate, depending on the company’s position. Use the company route guidance alongside the construction steps on this page.
If contractors deducted CIS from payments to your company, use the refund guide to check whether it can claim money back before closure.
Use the final-invoice VAT guide to finish VAT matters and cancel registration when required.
Use the CIS records guide to check what you need to keep after closure.