The Crisis Management Team is working closely with liquidator and asset managers of Debenhams and the wider archive sector to secure a positive future for the archives of Debenhams. […]

In September 2019, the international travel firm Thomas Cook failed, leading immediately to the loss of thousands of jobs and people stranded on holiday or without the holiday they had paid for. The business entered into compulsory liquidation and The Official Receiver was appointed liquidator.

The Beales department store chain entered into liquidation in January 2020 following several turbulent years of trading. The firm had been in operation for 140 years in Bournemouth, Dorset and further afield. Its rise and fall—from the ‘Selfridges of the south coast’ to a high-profile casualty of the crisis in British high street.

In February 2018, the British arm of Toys "R" Us went into administration. The American toy chain opened its first branch in the UK in 1985 and expanded to 105 stores over the next 35 years. Specialist archives The History of Advertising Trust (HatAds) stepped in and successfully became a lasting repository for the company’s marketing records and artefacts.

In 2016 the historic 1930s ‘Honey Monster’ factory site in Southall, Ealing, London closed and was sold with contents to developers in April 2017. A heritage consultant, hired by site developers to assess the factory prior to demolition, contacted the Crisis Management Team (CMT) about records in the factory in Autumn 2019.

In 1982, the London-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International was ‘on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic’. Thirty years after the memo was written, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) was working with the liquidator of the bank to arrange the deposit of three series of records.  Negotiations had begun towards the end of 2011 but in the following Spring came a sudden reversal when the offer of records was withdrawn and LMA was notified of their pending destruction.