Home / Trust and rights
Trust, rights and how records are handled.
The short version: nothing moves until we know who can authorise it, what the records contain and what has been agreed in writing.
Who can sign
Only someone with authority over the records can agree to sell or license them. Who that is depends on the company’s situation:
| Company situation | Usually the person with authority | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Still trading | The directors, acting for the company | Board approval where needed, and any client, contract or software terms that restrict the records |
| Members’ voluntary liquidation (solvent) | The liquidator | The appointment, and whether the records are company assets |
| Creditors’ voluntary or compulsory liquidation | The liquidator (an insolvency practitioner, or the official receiver) | The appointment, and whether the records are company assets |
| In administration | The administrator | The appointment and the administrator’s proposals |
| In receivership | The receiver, for the assets covered by their appointment | Whether the records fall within the charge or appointment |
| Bought by another company | Whoever now owns the records under the sale, often the buyer | The sale agreement: whether records and data transferred, and on what terms |
| Dissolved | Not the former directors. Company assets usually pass to the Crown on dissolution | Whether restoring the company, or dealing with the Crown’s representative, is realistic. See dissolved companies |
These are the usual positions under UK company and insolvency law, not a ruling on any case. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules in places. We ask to see the relevant appointment or authority before anything goes further. More detail is in our insolvency procedure guides.
The checks we make
- Ownership. Records you created through your own work are different from material held for clients, licensed from software vendors, or owned by someone else.
- Authority. The person signing has to be able to bind the company or act for it.
- Contracts and confidentiality. Client agreements, NDAs, professional rules and court orders can rule material out.
- Personal data. Business records are full of people. How names, contact details and other personal information are handled is agreed case by case, in writing, before anything leaves. See how personal details come out of business records.
- Lenders and charges. Whether a lender’s security covers the records.
- Staff and contractor work. Whether the company owns what staff and contractors produced.
- Privacy notices. What people were told when their details were collected.
- Sensitive material. Health, payment card and other special category data is usually left out.
How records are prepared
Depending on the archive, preparation can include replacing names, searching for passwords and keys, removing duplicates and leaving out whole categories such as HR, payroll, health, payment and children’s data. None of these is a standard step applied to every archive. There is no one-size process. What gets removed, replaced or excluded, who does the work and who pays for it are decided for each archive and written into the agreement. We don’t promise that any archive can be made anonymous, and removing names alone isn’t always enough.
What we won’t take
- Records where nobody can show authority to deal with them
- Files, logins or passwords at the enquiry stage. Describe the records; don’t send them
- Material held for a client, unless that client agrees
- Paper archives. We deal with digital records only
Your control
You decide whether anything goes ahead. Scope, permitted uses, any sample and the buyer are agreed in writing before records are shared. A sale or licence is never assumed from an enquiry. How a deal is put together is outlined in how licensing works.
Clients use a private client portal for agreed documents and samples. Buyers don’t have accounts on it.
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Services used for a particular deal are agreed as part of that deal.
Who we are
McKays is a trading name of Marcias Limited, registered in Scotland, company number SC653353. Marcias Limited is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, registration ZB473702. See about McKays and our privacy notice.