Fitlife Health Club Limited went into insolvent liquidation on 17 September. The Haddenham gym is still open, still selling memberships, and keeping the name.
The company behind the Fitlife health club on Banks Road in Haddenham went into insolvent liquidation on Thursday 17 September.
The club is still open. It is still selling memberships, and the two people who were its directors have given formal notice that they intend to carry on the business under the same name.
All of that is on the public record, in a single notice published in The London Gazette on the day the company went under. (The Gazette, notice 5212302)
What the notice actually says
The notice is not a closure announcement. It is a notice of re-use of a prohibited name, given under rule 22.4 of the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016, and it exists because of a specific piece of law.
Section 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 stops a director of a company that has gone into insolvent liquidation from running another business under the same or a confusingly similar name. Breaking that prohibition is a criminal offence. Publishing this notice in The Gazette is one of the lawful routes around it.
The notice states three things plainly:
- Fitlife Health Club Limited, company number 09539145, of Fitlife Health Club, Banks Road, Haddenham, Aylesbury, HP17 8EE, “went into insolvent liquidation” on 17 September 2026
- the two people who were its directors in the 12 months before that date gave the notice
- they intend to carry on “the whole or substantially the whole of the business of the insolvent company” under the names “FITLIFE” and “FITLIFE HEALTH CLUB”
The company’s registered office and its principal trading address are both given as the club itself. Its listed trading names are Fitlife, Fitlife Health Club and Fitlife Health Club Limited.
No liquidator is named anywhere in the notice, and no separate winding-up or appointment notice for the company had appeared in The Gazette by 19 September. That is normal at this stage: the appointment notice usually follows within a few weeks, and it is the document that tells creditors where to send a claim.
The accounts filed eight months ago
Companies House still listed Fitlife Health Club Limited as active when we checked on 19 September, which is the usual lag between a liquidation and the register catching up. The company was incorporated on 13 April 2015 and files under the fitness facilities code. (Companies House, company 09539145)
Its last accounts cover the year to 30 April 2025. They were signed by a director on 14 November 2025 and filed on 27 January 2026, eight months before the liquidation. They are unaudited small-company accounts and no profit figure was filed, which small companies are allowed to leave out.
What they do show is the balance sheet, and it had moved a long way in twelve months.
| 30 April 2025 | 30 April 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash at bank and in hand | nil | £5,077 |
| Creditors due within one year | £267,791 | £141,576 |
| Creditors due after more than one year | £430,952 | £440,093 |
| Net current liabilities | £227,791 | £95,287 |
| Net liabilities | £398,131 | £237,463 |
| Average employees, including directors | 10 | 4 |
Net liabilities of £398,131 means the company owed £398,131 more than everything it owned was worth on the books. That figure had grown by £160,668 in a year. Cash at bank had gone from £5,077 to nothing, and the debts falling due within twelve months had nearly doubled.
The same accounts record future minimum payments under non-cancellable operating leases of £382,373, of which £177,568 fell due within a year. Tangible assets, mostly leasehold improvements and gym equipment, were carried at £260,612.
None of that is unusual for a gym carrying fit-out costs, and a company can trade for years with net liabilities on its balance sheet. It is simply what the record showed the last time the company reported.
The register also lists a separate company, Fitlife Propco Limited, number 09540895, incorporated the day after Fitlife Health Club Limited and filed under the same fitness facilities code. Its registered office is an accountancy firm’s address in Milton Keynes, and it remains active. (Companies House, company 09540895)
The club is open and taking new members
Fitlife’s own website was live on 19 September and gives two clubs: Haddenham, at Banks Park, Banks Road, HP17 8EE, and Oxford, at 211 to 213 Banbury Road. The Haddenham address is the same one the Gazette notice gives for the liquidated company. (Fitlife contact page)
The site is advertising a 21-day all-access intro offer, sells reformer pilates, small group training and personal training, and runs bookings through the Mindbody app.
One thing it does not do is name a company. Fitlife’s published membership terms run to ten sections and never state which legal entity the member is contracting with, or give a company number. (Fitlife terms and conditions)
Those terms also set out how a membership ends, and the detail matters more than usual this week:
- cancelling requires at least one full calendar month’s notice to the club, and the membership then ends at the end of the following calendar month
- the terms say plainly that “cancelling your direct debit instruction for the payment of fees is not sufficient”
- a failed direct debit can attract a fee of no more than £15, and the club says it may re-present the payment twice in a calendar month and may refer missed payments to a debt collection agency
- fees will not rise during a commitment period, and any change to the monthly fee needs 30 days’ written notice
What it means for you
- The gym has not closed. The company that ran it has been put into insolvent liquidation; the business is continuing, lawfully, under the same name. The Gazette notice is the step that makes that lawful, not a sign that anything improper has happened.
- Check who your next payment goes to. If your direct debit reference or the name on your bank statement changes, that is the practical sign that the contract has moved to a different entity. The website’s terms do not name one.
- Do not simply cancel the direct debit if you want to leave. Fitlife’s own terms say that is not enough on its own and require a calendar month’s notice in writing.
- If the old company owes you money, a prepaid membership, a deposit or a supplier invoice, the claim lies against Fitlife Health Club Limited in liquidation. Watch The Gazette’s insolvency notices for the appointment of a liquidator, which is the notice that carries the address for claims.
- Nothing here is a finding against any individual. A rule 22.4 notice is a statutory step available to directors, and the company’s directors are entitled to reply to anything on this page.
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