Leonard Curtis administrators sort Harley Medical pre-pack

LEONARD CURTIS administrators have arranged a pre-pack of Harley Medical Group.

Neil Bennet and Andrew Duncan, partners at Leonard Curtis, were appointed joint administrators to the collapsed business earlier this month.

The new company was bought by its former management and RCapital. The company is now Aesthetic and Cosmetic Surgery but continues to trade as Harley Medical Group.

The company ran into trouble this year when the extent of faulty PIP breast implants used by the organisation was revealed, with about 1,700 women seeking compensation from the surgery. There is no indemnity insurance for this type of claim meaning the group would have collapsed under the liabilities.

Because the Harley Medical Group entity no longer exists the women have no organisation to make claims against, following the collapse of the distributor and the manufacturer of the implants earlier this year.

A spokesman for Harley Medical Group said: “The situation with the PIP implants wasn’t of our making; it arose as a result of a sophisticated fraud, by the suppliers of these implants, perpetrated over a long period of time that went undetected by the regulators for 12 consecutive years.

“Despite ourselves also being a victim of this fraud, we were also faced with liabilities arising from a class action that we simply wouldn’t have been able to survive. This is why we believe that the action that has been taken remains the only action, in the prevailing circumstances, that could have been taken in the best interests of our PIP and other patients.”

Earlier this year, the medical group removed and replaced about 1,000 women’s implants. However, in June the company changed tact and said it would remove the implant free of charge for women who had a medical risk and that it would replace implants at cost.

The administrators were unable to comment.