Macclesfield Town FC Wound Up Over Debts Worth £500,000

Macclesfield Town Football Club has been wound up in the High Court in relation to debts owed by the business amounting to around half a million pounds.

The application for a winding up order came from HMRC, with the football club understood to owe close to £190,000 in taxes.

A series of adjournments have previously been granted in the case but on this most recent occasion the judge presiding decided that Macclesfield had been given “ample opportunities” to settle its debts.

“I can see nothing that gives me any comfort that this club can pay its debts within a reasonable period,” Judge Sebastian Prentis said.

Legal representatives of the football club had asked for a further adjournment of eight weeks on the basis that negotiations for a potential sale were ongoing and at an advanced stage.

The hearing took place on a virtual basis in the specialist Insolvency and Companies Court on Wednesday September 16th.

The court was told that the football club owed around £190,000 to HMRC and around £170,000 to two other creditors.

Having been docked points in League Two, the fourth tier of English football, for regulation breaches relating to non-payment of wages, Macclesfield were recently relegated into non-league status.

Judge Prentis noted during the hearing that the winding up petition has been in place since the early months of 2019.

The court was told that the owner of Macclesfield Town, Amar Alkadhi, believed the amounts owed to creditors to be £4,000.

A late offer to pay £20,000 of the outstanding debt is understood to have been made by Mr Alkadhi, while a screenshot of a bank statement showing £1.1 million in credit was given as evidence that the club’s debts could in fact be settled.

However, those arguments proved unconvincing to the judge in the case who decided ultimately to grant a compulsory winding up order.

Macclesfield’s football club was first created in 1874 and became Macclesfield Town FC in 1946 after the end of the Second World War.

The club was promoted back to the Football League in 2018 but only lasted a short time in League Two before suffering its points deductions and being relegated back to the National League.