Creative Venue Maidstone enters liquidation after 15 years

Creative Venue, the Maidstone venue styling firm that dressed weddings and events across Kent, has gone into liquidation. Event Solutions (South East) Limited, which traded as Creative Venue from Unit 33 Bircholt Road on the Parkwood industrial estate, passed a winding-up resolution on 7 August, according to notices published in The London Gazette on 11 August.

The special resolution records “that it has been proved to the satisfaction of this meeting that the company cannot, by reason of its liabilities, continue its business, and that it is advisable to wind up the company”. Ruth Ellen Duncan of Maxwell Davies Limited, an insolvency practice at Vinters Business Park in Maidstone, was appointed liquidator the same day, by both members and creditors.

This is a creditors’ voluntary liquidation: the company’s owners have chosen to close it because it cannot pay what it owes, and the liquidator will now collect in whatever assets remain and share them out among creditors.

Fifteen years in the events trade

Companies House records show the business was incorporated in November 2010 as Poppies Papercraft Limited and took the Event Solutions (South East) name in September 2011. Claire Elizabeth Smith has been its sole director since June 2012, and signed the winding-up resolution as director. The Gazette notice records its nature of business as artistic creation.

Creative Venue dressed venues rather than running one. Its listing on the Kent Wedding Directory describes an award winning venue styling company based in Maidstone and working across the whole of Kent, covering weddings, parties, proms, corporate events and Christmas celebrations, with services running from decoration, floristry and table decor through to setting up and taking down on the day.

What it means for you

If you have an event booked with Creative Venue, or have paid a deposit towards one, you are now a creditor of the company. The Gazette notice lists the liquidator’s contact details: Ruth Ellen Duncan at ruth@maxwelldavies.com, with rajeshree@maxwelldavies.com as an alternative. Contact her office to register what you are owed.

Depending on how you paid, you may not need to wait on the liquidation. Citizens Advice explains the two card routes: if you paid by credit card and the booking cost more than £100, you can make a Section 75 claim to your card provider for the full amount, and if you paid by debit card you can ask your bank to attempt a chargeback. Both are usually quicker than waiting for a distribution from the liquidator, and unsecured creditors in a liquidation often recover little.

Venues, florists and other suppliers owed money by the company should also prove their debts to the liquidator at the same addresses.

The record so far

Companies House still showed the company as active when Maidstone Live checked on 12 August; liquidation paperwork normally reaches the public register in the weeks after the appointment, and the Gazette notices are the formal public record in the meantime.

The closure follows two other local company failures Maidstone Live has reported in recent weeks: architecture practice Designscape in Bearsted, wound up owing HMRC £128,393, and The Stone Tile Warehouse on Sutton Road, whose creditors’ meeting was set for 12 August.