A prolific film producer, whose projects have starred Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Four Weddings and a Funeral’s Anna Chancellor, has had scores of his production businesses forcibly removed from the UK’s companies register, leaving workers unable to chase unpaid fees.
Alan Latham, whose low-budget films have previously raised questions over his use of tax credits, has seen 50 of his film businesses compulsorily struck off by Companies House, according to data compiled by the film workers’ union, Bectu.
A compulsory strike off occurs when Companies House dissolves a company for failing certain legal obligations, such as ignoring warnings to file annual accounts or statements providing information on shareholders. Failure to make these filings on time is a criminal offence and offending companies are frequently struck off.
However, once a company is removed from the register there is no longer an entity for creditors to make claims against. Film workers have told the Guardian that they have been unable to collect debts owed to them by Latham’s former businesses, including ones that have been struck off.
One of Latham’s companies, City Girls Productions, was set up to produce the film City Girls, starring Elizabeth Hurley, which began filming in Yorkshire during 2021 but was abandoned after a member of the cast contracted Covid-19.
One crew member said she was among a number of film workers beginning their careers who were not fully paid.
“We were all young, desperate for work and to prove our worth. We were overly excited – that comes with not understanding – and we were exploited,” she said.
“It felt like they were using young whippersnappers as their cashflow, without us consenting or having any way of knowing that this was the MO [modus operandi].”
A second supplier, who had worked on another unfinished Latham film called Rufus Kane, said his business was owed thousands of pounds by the production company RK Film Productions.
“We got every excuse under the sun [not to be paid],” he said. “It was really bad and we just about managed to keep our heads above water. We had no choice but to write the debt off. Even just talking about it brings up the old scars.”
City Girls Productions and RK Film Productions were compulsorily struck off by Companies House in 2024 and 2025 respectively. The Guardian has been told of further Latham productions where film workers claim they have not been paid.
In total, 50 companies have been removed from the register by Companies House when Latham was a director, the Bectu analysis reveals. The businesses were late filing either annual accounts or confirmation statements on more than 400 occasions, according to additional research compiled by the business data firm Tech City Labs.
The frequency of the interventions to strike off Latham’s companies raises questions as to whether he planned for large numbers of his businesses to be dissolved.
Discrete companies – often called special purpose vehicles or SPVs – are routinely formed to manage a single project and tend to continue trading for years after a film has been released in order to collect royalties, according to industry sources.
Latham – who remains a director of about another 50 active companies, according to Companies House data – is a well-known figure within the UK film industry. He is credited as a producer on 81 releases dating back to 1996 with two further films in production, according to the online film bible IMDb.com.
In November the Guardian reported on questions over the financing of some of Latham’s films, where leaked internal budgets appeared to show significantly lower costs than published figures used to determine the level of tax credits the productions claimed.
Latham was approached for comment.
