UK Construction and Law

Nine year ban for a director who moved almost three million pounds of assets as his contracts fell away

By Staff Writer  |  22 August 2026

The Court of Session disqualified Garry Pettigrew for nine years on 20 August after finding that he caused the transfer of 2,979,383 pounds of assets out of a waste company to two connected companies, without the consent of the bank holding a charge over them and against the advice of the company's own accountants and solicitors. The company was liquidated five months later owing more than 15 million pounds.

Mr Pettigrew, 59, was a director of Healthcare Environmental Services Limited, which disposed of clinical waste for the NHS. In September 2018 he attended a meeting with NHS and government officials to discuss allegations that waste was being stockpiled in breach of environmental permits. He began moving equipment out of the company days before it lost 17 NHS England contracts in October 2018. Further contracts were terminated in December, and the transfers continued through that period.

The recipients were HEG Sustainable Solutions Limited and Starryshaw Consultants Ltd, of which he and his wife were then the only directors. An attempted sale of the business collapsed in December 2018, trading ceased and the staff were made redundant. The company entered liquidation in April 2019 with debts of more than 15 million pounds. The ban runs until 2035.

Consent was needed and was not obtained

The transfers were made without the consent of the company's bank, which held a charge over all of its assets, and despite advice from the company's accountants and its solicitors that consent was required. That combination, a secured lender's rights overridden and professional advice on the point disregarded, is what carried the length of the ban.

Although the case falls within the middle bracket, I consider that the nature of the breach by Pettigrew of his duties is such to mean that it is at the top end of that bracket. In these circumstances I conclude that disqualification for a period of 9 years is appropriate.

Lord Lake, Senator of the College of Justice, in the Court of Session

The judge placed the conduct within the middle bracket and then at the top of it, which is a distinction that decides years of a person's working life. It turned on the character of the breach rather than on the amount transferred.

The rest of the record

A director disqualification undertaking of three and a half years was accepted from his co-director, Alison Pettigrew, on 6 August 2021, for allowing the transfers to take place. Criminal proceedings brought in Scotland over allegations of storing medical waste illegally were dropped in October 2023. In June 2025 Mr Pettigrew was fined 1,000 pounds and costs for contempt of court, having photographed witnesses in breach of a prohibition by the court and then republished the images with offensive comments on social media.

Two years to investigate, a further two to bring the case to a hearing, and seven years from the transfers to the ban. Disqualification is a long instrument, and it does not move at the speed of the loss it addresses.

Why a construction reader should care

This is a waste business rather than a builder, but the shape of it is familiar on any construction ledger. A company with a concentrated customer base loses the contracts that carry it. Between the loss of the work and the formal insolvency there is a window in which plant, vehicles and equipment can be moved into a company under the same control, leaving the trading entity with the liabilities and the creditors with the shell.

For a subcontractor or a supplier watching a main contractor slow down, the practical signals are on the public record: a change in the registered office, new companies incorporated at the same address with overlapping directors, and charges registered or satisfied out of the ordinary run. None of those is proof of anything. All of them are cheap to check, and this judgment is a reminder of what they can precede.