Individual Voluntary Agreement (IVA)
An IVA is a formal agreement and is effectively a contract between you and the your creditors.
It ring fences any historic debt allowing you to continue to trade as a sole trader or partnership and to make contributions towards the debt at an agreed and affordable level over a set timescale.To be approved an IVA requires the agreement of 75% (in value) of creditors which vote upon it. It also allows for the orderly realisation of assets by the debtor.
Partnership Voluntary Agreement (PVA)
This is a contract between the insolvent partnership and their creditors.
It means they can continue to trade and make contributions to the creditors from ongoing profits, or realise their assets for the benefit of creditors.A PVA will only deal with the liabilities and assets of the partnership, so if individual partners have personal assets and liabilities they may also need to enter into an IVA.
Bankruptcy
Anyone can be declared bankrupt, including individual members of a partnership.
Although it has negative connotations it can be the best choice in some individual insolvency cases.