Avon House School in Woodford Green shut on 7 August. Its Companies House record now reads In Administration: the new filings and the six charges still outstanding.
Avon House School in Woodford Green has closed with immediate effect, weeks before the new school year, and joint administrators were appointed to the company behind it on 7 August 2026.
The appointment was published in the London Gazette on 12 August. It names Philip James Watkins (IP number 009626) and Philip Lewis Armstrong (IP number 9397) of FRP Advisory Trading Limited, 110 Cannon Street, London EC4N 6EU, as joint administrators of Avon House School Limited, company number 00802713. The case sits in the High Court of Justice under court number CR-2026-006083, and the notice gives the company’s principal trading address as 490 High Road, Woodford, Woodford Green IG8 0PN, with its nature of business recorded as education. (Appointment of administrators, Avon House School Limited, The Gazette)
The school’s own website has been replaced by a closure notice. “It is with much sadness that we are announcing the closure of the school with immediate effect,” it reads. It says the school “has struggled with financial pressures including the introduction of VAT on school fees and the rise in NI and pension costs”, and that “we have explored a number of options to try and save the school from closure but in recent days it became obvious that was not meant to be”. The same statement dates the school’s founding to more than a hundred years ago under the name Essex House, says it was renamed Avon House School in the early 1950s, and describes it as a school for children aged 3 to 11. (Closure of Avon House Preparatory School, avonhouseschool.co.uk)
Five months ago the directors said the school was resilient
The most recent audited accounts on file cover the year to 31 August 2024. They were signed on 2 March 2026 and filed at Companies House on 10 March 2026, and they are worth reading now because of how recently they were written.
They record group turnover of £3,663,576, up from £3,063,150 the year before. The group made an operating profit of £238,902 and a pre-tax profit of £51,624, against a pre-tax loss of £75,863 in 2023; after a tax charge of £107,288 it still finished the year with a loss of £55,664. Net assets stood at £3,323,759, cash at bank at £99,650, and bank loans falling due after more than one year at £2,567,225. The group employed an average of 57 school staff during the year, one more than the year before, at a total staff cost of £2,135,086.
Two disclosures in that document stand out. The going concern note records that “the Company has entered into a Time to Pay arrangement with HM Revenue & Customs in respect of outstanding liabilities”, adding that all payments due under the arrangement had been met. And in the directors’ report, under post year-end events, the board wrote that VAT registration, higher employers’ National Insurance and inflation “has resulted in a short-term reduction in cash reserves”, before concluding that “the Directors are satisfied that the School remains financially resilient”.
That was five months before the administrators walked in.
The same accounts carry a prior year adjustment that reduced reserves brought forward by £491,719, after what the directors describe as a material misstatement relating to an earlier reporting period. They say the extra review work this prompted is why the filing was late. The group also paid dividends of £15,000 in the year, and £30,500 the year before.
The directors named the risk that closed them
The strategic report in the same accounts sets out the principal risk to the business in plain terms: “Following the introduction of VAT on private education, the Company faces a risk of decreased pupil numbers in the years following.” The directors then judged that risk manageable, partly because the school was absorbing some of the cost rather than passing it all on, and partly, they wrote, because of “the closure of another local private school”.
Avon House is now the school on the other side of that sentence. Whichever independent schools in this part of Redbridge pick up its families, they will be doing so for the same reason Avon House expected to benefit two years ago.
Which company is in administration, and which is not
This part matters, because the group is not one company.
Avon House School Limited is the parent. Its accounts describe it as generating revenue by charging management fees to its subsidiaries, and name two of them: Avon House Preparatory School Limited, which is the company that actually supplies the education, and The Sheila Ferrari Dyslexia Centre Limited, an assessment and tuition centre serving pupils from the prep school and others in the area with dyslexia and other educational needs.
The Gazette notice covers the parent only. Checked today, Companies House shows both Avon House Preparatory School Limited (company number 08313104) and The Sheila Ferrari Dyslexia Centre Limited (company number 08313336) as active, with no insolvency document in either filing history, and a Gazette search returns no insolvency notice for either name. That is the position on the registers, not a guarantee about what follows.
Two more things the register shows. When this piece first ran on 13 August the parent company’s own Companies House page still read “active” and carried no administration document at all, which is normal lag; the Gazette notice was the formal record of the appointment. The register has since caught up, and the section below sets out what it now says. And of the 16 charges ever registered against the company, six remain outstanding, including a 2016 debenture to Barclays Bank PLC and a 2019 charge to Barclays Security Trustee Ltd over freehold land. (Charges, Companies House)
The site itself is the group’s largest asset by a distance. The accounts put the freehold property at a net book value of £6,811,813, following an open market valuation on 27 April 2023 by Lambert Smith Hampton. What happens to nearly seven million pounds of freehold on Woodford Green’s main road is a question that will outlast the term dates, and one that will eventually surface in the borough’s planning record. Woodford Green is among the more expensive parts of Redbridge; the borough’s house price figures put detached homes at an average above £1.1 million.
Avon House School on Companies House: what the register now shows
If you have come here looking for the Companies House record itself, this is what it said when we checked it on 22 August 2026, and what has changed since the school closed.
The company is Avon House School Limited, company number 00802713. It is a private limited company, incorporated on 27 April 1964, and its nature of business is recorded under SIC code 85200, primary education. Its company status now reads In Administration, no longer “active”.
| Companies House field | What it says |
|---|---|
| Company number | 00802713 |
| Status | In Administration |
| Incorporated | 27 April 1964 |
| Registered office | 3rd Floor, 110 Cannon Street, London EC4N 6EU |
| Nature of business (SIC) | 85200, primary education |
| Last accounts made up to | 31 August 2024 |
| Next accounts made up to | 31 August 2025, due by 31 August 2026 |
| Next confirmation statement | Due by 15 October 2026 |
| Charges | 16 registered, 6 outstanding, 10 satisfied |
Three documents have been filed since the school shut, and they are worth reading in date order:
- 19 August 2026, form AM01, appointment of an administrator. This is the register’s own record of the appointment the Gazette announced. It runs to three pages.
- 18 August 2026, form AD01, registered office address changed. The company’s registered office moved from Salisbury House, London EC2M 5SQ to 3rd Floor, 110 Cannon Street, London EC4N 6EU. That is FRP Advisory’s building, so post addressed to the company now goes to the administrators.
- 30 July 2026, form AP01, appointment of a director. Mrs Wendy Jane Terry was appointed a director on 30 July 2026. Two days earlier, a form TM01 filed on 28 July had recorded her termination as a director on 27 July. The same person leaving and rejoining the board inside four days, a week before administrators went in, is on the public record without any explanation attached to it.
The company’s insolvency tab now carries one case: in administration, started 7 August 2026, with Philip Lewis Armstrong and Philip James Watkins of FRP Advisory LLP, 2nd Floor, 110 Cannon Street, London EC4N 6EU, named as the practitioners. (Insolvency, Companies House)
On the charges tab, the six that are still outstanding are the ones that decide who gets paid out of the Woodford Green freehold. Five are Barclays: a debenture created 21 February 2013, a legal charge created 26 February 2013 over the freehold at 490 to 494 High Road, a guarantee and debenture created 26 March 2013, a fixed charge created 14 October 2016, and a 2019 charge to Barclays Security Trustee Ltd over freehold land to the east of the site. The sixth is much older: a legal charge created 25 March 2002 over the freehold at 492 High Road, with David Howard Malyon and Hilary Ann Elizabeth Guest named as the persons entitled. Mr Malyon is the same name that appears on a 2024 filing recording his cessation as a person with significant control.
Two things are not on the register yet. The accounts for the year to 31 August 2025 were due by 31 August 2026 and have not been filed. And the administrators’ statement of proposals, the document that will say what they intend to do with the company and what creditors might get, had not been filed when we checked. Both will appear in the filing history when they land, and Companies House has a free “Follow this company” button on that page that emails you the moment anything new is filed.
What it means for you
If your child was due at Avon House in September. You need a school place, and Redbridge handles that through an in-year application. The council’s page says in-year applications for the 2026/27 year can be submitted from 1 August 2026, that an in-year application can be made at any time during the school year, and that you can name up to six Redbridge schools and will be asked for proof of your address. Apply through the council rather than approaching schools individually. (Change your child’s school, Redbridge Council)
If you have paid fees in advance. Contact the joint administrators. The Gazette notice gives FRP Advisory on 020 3005 4000, with Zach Drennan as an alternative contact at zach.drennan@frpadvisory.com. For scale, the last balance sheet showed deferred income, which is income billed or received for teaching not yet delivered, of £1,327,611 due within a year and £361,240 beyond it. That is a 2024 figure and not a statement of what is owed to anyone now, but it shows how much of this school’s cash arrived before the terms it paid for.
If you worked there. The same contact details apply. Where an employer is insolvent, staff can claim statutory redundancy pay and certain other payments from the Insolvency Service, and the route is set out on GOV.UK.
If you are a supplier or creditor. The administrators are the point of contact, and their statement of proposals, when it is filed, will appear on the company’s Companies House record. Nothing had been filed there at the time of writing.
We will follow the filings. Administration is not the end of the corporate story, and the proposals document, when it appears, will say considerably more about what happened here than either the Gazette notice or a set of accounts signed in March.
Sources: The Gazette notice 5189444; Avon House School Limited, Companies House; audited group accounts for the year ended 31 August 2024, filed 10 March 2026; the school’s own closure statement at avonhouseschool.co.uk; and Redbridge Council school admissions. All checked 13 August 2026.
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