The suspension of wrongful trading provisions will apply for a period of three months, from 1 March 2020, with the ability to extend if necessary. It is not clear exactly how this change will be implemented, but it looks as though it will be dealt with as a standalone matter, with legislation to be introduced at the earliest opportunity.

Insolvency laws are to be amended to give UK companies a breathing space and enable them to keep trading while they explore options for rescue. In the Notes to editors (which form part of the press release), reference is made to the proposal originating from 2016 (on which see Legal update, Changes to UK corporate insolvency framework: BEIS response to 2016 consultation) to add new restructuring tools to the UK's insolvency toolkit:

The government indicated in August 2018 that it intended to proceed with these proposals. It would seem that they are now to be fast-tracked in light of COVID-19.

In its paper, Proposals for mitigating the short term effects on viable businesses of COVID-19, published on Friday, 26 March 2020, the Insolvency Law Committee of the City of London Law Society (CLLS) proposed a number of suggestions to help save viable businesses during this difficult time.

These included advancing the 2018 corporate insolvency law reforms and also extending the availability of the existing administration moratorium on COVID-19 grounds. We do not know yet to what extent the government will implement the CLLS suggestions, but at least, initially, extending the existing administration moratorium is likely to be a quicker temporary fix than introducing a raft of wholly new insolvency procedures, even if those procedures have been on the cards for a while.