Can I still be a director of another company if this one fails?

Yes, you can generally still be a director of another company after one company fails, unless you are formally disqualified by court order or the Insolvency Service. Company failure alone doesn't automatically prevent you from holding other directorships. Many successful business people have failed companies in their backgrounds and continue to serve as directors elsewhere. However, several situations can limit your ability to hold directorships. If you are formally disqualified as a director—typically for periods of 2-15 years following investigation into misconduct—you are legally prohibited from being a director or involved in company management during the disqualification period. Breaching a disqualification order is a criminal offence. If you are personally bankrupt following business failure, you cannot be a company director until discharged from bankruptcy (usually 12 months) without court permission. If you already hold directorships in other companies when your company fails, these positions are not automatically affected unless those companies choose to remove you or unless you're disqualified or bankrupt. Whether other companies will want to retain you as director depends on the circumstances of the failure and your reputation. If the failure involved clear misconduct or mismanagement, other boards may lose confidence; if the failure was due to external factors or you handled it responsibly, they may be supportive. Taking new directorships after company failure is entirely possible for non-disqualified directors, though the failure will be discoverable through Companies House records and director checks. Prospective companies conducting due diligence will see your history, so transparency about what happened and what you learned is important. Many companies, particularly in entrepreneurial sectors, view past business failure as valuable learning experience rather than disqualification. Corporate positions, regulated industries, or public sector bodies may be more cautious, but even here, context matters—responsible handling of failure is viewed very differently from misconduct. If you're currently a director of other companies while facing potential failure of one company, you should consider whether to disclose the situation to those other boards, particularly if there's any risk of contagion, shared reputation damage, or if the difficulties might affect your ability to fulfill duties. Some directors resign from other positions temporarily to focus on managing the crisis in one company. If you want to start a new company after failure, you generally can, but strict rules prevent 'phoenixing'—using the same or similar name to your failed company within five years without following proper procedures. This is designed to prevent directors from evading creditor claims by closing one company and immediately starting another doing the same business. You can start legitimately new ventures with different names and business models. Your appetite for taking on new director roles after experiencing company failure may be affected—some directors become more cautious, others more determined to succeed. Emotionally, you may need time to recover before taking on significant new responsibilities. Practically, if you have personal guarantees being enforced or ongoing litigation from the failed company, these distractions might impair your ability to focus on new director duties. If you're concerned about future directorship prospects, the key is handling the current failure as responsibly as possible—cooperate with insolvency practitioners, act transparently, document your decisions showing you prioritized creditors, and avoid any conduct that could lead to disqualification. The narrative around the failure matters: directors who can explain what happened, demonstrate learning, and show they acted with integrity throughout typically have far better prospects than those who mishandled the failure or engaged in misconduct.