Hey again,
Well, I've been through a company going into receivership before, so here's a bit of info about the process.
It is when a company CEASES trading altoghether and or (voluntarily or otherwise) goes into receivership that you follow the course of claiming wages back from the government.
This is not the case here. European is still trading and is NOT in receivership (yet), it seems they are in a voluntary agreement, and continue to employe a number of staff to help it restructure. Therefore, as a company that continues to trade and is not in receivership, your wages will need to be paid by European. It's been a few years since I was last in the UK, but from what I remember they have an obligation to pay you 'pay in lieu of notice', as well as statutory redundancy (although I believe that the statutory minimum for redundancy applies only if you have at least 2 years continuous service?).
As I understand it, the legal situation would be that European is making you redundant, and will need to pay you a weeks pay in lieu of notice for each year of service as well as statutory minimum redundancy for each year of service if you have more than 2 years employment.
European sending you the goverment forms is confusing unless they are planning on calling in the receivers which apparently they are not. These forms are usually to be used only when an official receiver is called in. An official receiver looks at whether it is in the best interest of the creditors to run all or part of the business in situ, whether to see all or part of the operating business, or (and what is more commonplace) what assests can be liquidated to free up cash to pay the creditors. Usually though, the amount of money freed up from assets falls quite a long way short of paying off all the creditors.
European will owe money to the Inland Revenue for unpaid National Insurance contributions and taxes. The IR automatically get the first chunk of the cake. Then, any creditors that are secured (e.g. A creditor who maintains title on an aircraft/piece of equipment etc) will get their chunk. Then general suppliers. Finally, other creditors including of course the staff. By this point the cake is pretty much gone, but there is some recourse to (capped) wage recoup from the goverment through the NI programme. That's the forms you all have. But you don't need them (yet, at least) as European is still trading. If European does ultimately appoint a receiver or it's creditors foreclose, then you will need those forms.
I think this kind of explains it, not to lecture y'all (!!), but too much information is better than none at all right?!
Good Luck again with getting your money back, and also in getting back to the skies soon,