Who can accept service of a winding-up petition?

Acknowledgment is what the server must capture

The rule turns on what the person at the address says and what the server reasonably believes, which is why the service record matters as much as the delivery. The High Court confirmed in 2025 that handing the petition to a receptionist who acknowledged authority to accept it was valid service, even though she was not an officer or employee of the debtor company; the acknowledgment, contemporaneously recorded, carried the day. A professional server’s certificate setting out the exchange verbatim is the evidence that forecloses argument.

When nobody suitable is present

If no qualifying person is at the registered office, the petition may be deposited at or about the office in a manner likely to come to the notice of a person attending, for example secured visibly at the entrance or through the letterbox with the attendance documented. The further fallbacks, last known principal place of business or personal service on an officer wherever found, are covered in our answer on serving at an empty or moved registered office.

Precision protects the timetable

Everything downstream, the Gazette advertisement window, the certificate of compliance and the hearing itself, is timed from valid service. A challenge to service can adjourn the petition and shift costs onto the petitioner, so creditors’ solicitors routinely instruct specialist servers for petitions precisely to make the service leg unimpeachable.