Katie Price warned she could be arrested for missing bankruptcy hearings

Katie Price could be arrested if she continues to miss hearings over her bankruptcy without a reasonable excuse, the High Court has been told.

The former glamour model had been due to face questions about her finances before a specialist bankruptcy court in London on Friday but failed to attend.

She had provided medical evidence giving medical reasons as her excuse for being unable to attend, which a judge described as “scanty”.

Barristers for the trustees of Ms Price’s first bankruptcy asked the judge to order her attendance at a future hearing and said she should be “on notice” that she could be arrested if she did not attend.

Darragh Connell, representing the trustees, told the court: “It is important that she is on notice of the fact that this is a possibility.”

It comes after she was declared bankrupt for the second time last month, over an unpaid tax bill of £761,994.05.

The demand for payment was made by HMRC last October, yet the court had previously heard that the former model had failed to respond.

She was made aware of the ruling during an appearance on a podcast, in which she was told there was a breaking news alert about her. She responded: “Has it? Oh get lost… Are you actually serious, while I’m sat here? What have I done now?”

The 46-year-old was first declared bankrupt in 2019 over unpaid debts, with the court told the bill derived from self-assessments between 2020 and 2022, and includes income tax, surcharges, VAT and interest.

In written submissions, Mr Connell said: “The respondent should be in no doubt that any future non-attendance without a reasonable excuse will constitute contempt of court and necessitate an application for a warrant for her arrest.”

The court heard that Ms Price’s personal assistant had sent a statement from a consultant psychiatrist saying she had anxiety and depression, as well as other issues affecting her mental health, which meant she could not attend the hearing.

She asked for an adjournment of at least six months but was not represented in court.

Mr Connell said Ms Price had been aware of the hearing “for a considerable period of time” and her evidence “simply is not good enough”.

He said: “It is clear that the evidence filed very late is of a variety that is deeply, deeply unsatisfactory and we are in a very serious situation as a consequence.”

Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Mark Mullen said “similarly brief” letters had been sent before previous court hearings which Ms Price also did not attend.

While he described the court as “sympathetic” to people with health conditions, he said: “There is a consistent pattern of last-minute adjournments being sought on the basis of scanty medical evidence.

“This can’t be allowed to drag on on such an unsatisfactory basis.”

Judge Mullen ordered that Ms Price attend the next hearing unless she gave a reasonable excuse and that she provide medical information so adjustments could be made to “facilitate” her giving evidence.

Ms Price’s former husband, Alex Reid, attended the hearing and made notes throughout.

In February, the mother-of-five was ordered to forfeit 40 per cent of her income from OnlyFans, an adult entertainment website, for the next three years to pay off her debts.

In October last year, Ms Price said she was “fed up” with being threatened with legal action and would go to prison to be “done with it all”.

Speaking to TV personality Michelle Visage on her Rule Breakers podcast, Ms Price discussed her bankruptcy and said she had recently been to court “more times than I’ve had hot dinners” and would “genuinely” not care if she was jailed.

In March 2023, Ms Price told Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show that people should not be “ashamed” of being declared bankrupt and she had been struggling with her mental health in recent years.

During a hearing about her finances in October 2020, the former model said she hadn’t been “able to deal with these issues or in the right mental state to understand everything that has been going on.”