Directors

You can read about Director Disqualification here:

When can disqualification occur? When a company has failed, the O[fficial] R[eceiver] (or I[nsolvency] P[racticioner] in a creditors' voluntary liquidation, an administrative receivership or an administration) has to send the Secretary of State a report on the conduct of all directors who were in office in the last 3 years of the company's trading. The Secretary of State has to decide whether it is in the public interest to seek a disqualification order. Any application is heard and decided by the court.

Examples of conduct which may lead to disqualification include:

continuing to trade to the detriment of creditors at a time when the company was insolvent failure to keep proper accounting records failure to prepare and file accounts or make returns to Companies House

failure to submit tax returns or pay over to the Crown tax or other money due failure to co-operate with the OR/IP.

The status of directors loans is most interesting, in practice it may be very hard to recover the debts, see Thakrar v. Ciro Citterio :-

Sorry, this is more relevant :-

Fair enough, but surely there must be times when a business goes down the pan and its not totally the directors fault. Could said Director then go and open more Ltd companies?

Or is it a case of if you mess up one company its game over as a director? :)

You can be a director of as many companies as you want to untill and if you get banned/disqualified.