My web designer has disappeared: how to get your website and domain back

The emails bounce, the phone goes to voicemail, and the website is still up but nobody can change it. This happens more than you would think, and the instinct is to chase the website first. Do not. Chase the domain. The domain is your address and usually your email too, and if it lapses or moves while you are arguing about a login, you have a much bigger problem than a stale homepage. Here is the order I would work through it, using the routes Nominet and the registrars publish on their own pages. This is general information about those published processes, not legal advice.

First, work out what you actually control

Before you send a single chasing email, spend twenty minutes finding out where everything sits. Most of this you can check yourself without asking anyone.

• Look the domain up on Nominet's own lookup tool. It tells you which registrar the domain sits with and when it expires. Write both down.
• Work out which email address the domain notices go to. Nominet writes to the admin contact on the record, and whoever reads that inbox effectively holds the domain.
• Try to log in to your hosting. If you have ever received an invoice from a hosting company directly, you probably have an account there.
• Try to log in to the site itself, and note whether it is a builder such as Wix or Squarespace, WordPress, or a hand-built site.
• Check your bank statements. Whether you pay the designer, or pay a platform and a registrar directly, changes what you can do on your own.
• If the designer traded as a limited company, look it up on Companies House and check whether it is still active.

The important distinction is between the registrar, meaning the company that bills and manages the domain, and the registrant, meaning the name the domain is actually registered in. Different problem, different fix, and getting them the wrong way round wastes weeks.

If the domain is registered in your name

This is the good case, and it is more common than people expect: plenty of designers register domains properly in the client's name and simply manage them. You do not need the designer at all. Nominet's guidance is to ask your current registrar to move it for you first, and if they will not or cannot, you can do it yourself. In Nominet's words, "If your current registrar is unable to complete the move for you, you can move your domain name to a new registrar using Nominet Online Services."

• Log in to Nominet Online Services using the admin contact email address on the domain.
• Tick the domain or domains you want to move.
• Choose 'Change Registrar'.
• Enter the new registrar's name or their TAG. Any UK registrar will tell you theirs if you ask.
• Enter the invoice and payment details and confirm.

Nominet charges "a single transaction fee to switch to a new registrar of £10 plus VAT, even if you're moving more than one domain name in the transaction". Some registrars have what Nominet calls a 'handshake' enabled, meaning they have to accept the incoming domain: "A registrar has up to 5 days to accept your domain name(s), otherwise your request will time out and an automatic refund will be issued." So tell the new registrar it is coming.

If the domain is registered in the designer's name

Now you need a registrant transfer, which is Nominet's term for changing the name a domain is registered in rather than just who manages it. It covers exactly this situation along with selling a business or moving a domain from an individual to a limited company. The catch is that it is not something you can do unilaterally: the process runs from the current registrant's side, and "The new registrant will have 5 days in which they must accept the transfer, or else it will time out and you will need to complete the process again." The fee is the same £10 plus VAT, and either party can pay it.

So the designer, or whoever is left at the company, has to co-operate. In practice a short, calm, written message works better than a legal-sounding one: say which domain, say you want a registrant transfer to your name, offer to pay the £10 plus VAT yourself, and give a date. Put it in writing so you have a record if this ends up somewhere more formal. If they respond at all, this is usually over in a week.

If you have lost the email address on the record

A common dead end: the domain is in your name, but the contact email is an old address at the designer's domain, so every reset link goes somewhere you cannot read. Nominet publishes a route for this. "If you no longer have access to the email address that we have listed against your domain name registration, and are unable to update this through your registrar, you will need to re-establish your identity in order to update your contact details." There is a form for it inside Nominet Online Services, and "There is a fee of £10 plus VAT to re-establish your identity and update the email address that we hold against your domain name."

Do not let it expire while you are sorting it out

This is the part that turns an annoying problem into an expensive one. A .uk domain expires on the anniversary of its registration and then runs down a fixed clock. Nominet also warns that "Your registrar may follow a different process to this, which may result in your domain name and associated services being suspended before the times stated below", so treat the expiry date itself as the deadline, not the end of the grace period.

Source: Nominet, what happens if I don't renew my domain by expiry. You can renew a .uk domain up to ten years ahead, which is the cheapest insurance in this whole article.

If they will not respond at all

Nominet runs a Dispute Resolution Service for .uk domains, and since 7 July 2026 it is administered by WIPO: "While the policy and overall direction of the DRS remains with Nominet, all new complaints must be submitted through WIPO's website." Be clear-eyed about what it is for. You have to show two things: that you have rights in a name that is the same or similar to the domain, such as a trade mark or an established trading name, and that the registration is an Abusive Registration. It is not a general contract dispute service, and a designer who registered a domain in their own name as part of a normal service arrangement does not automatically meet that test.

Source: Nominet, resolving .uk domain disputes. Fees were plus VAT for cases raised before 7 July 2026; VAT does not apply to cases raised on or after that date. Nominet says fully reasoned cases take roughly eight to twelve weeks end to end.

The remedies are transfer, suspension or cancellation of the domain. Nominet's own pre-complaint checklist includes checking Companies House to see whether a limited company respondent is still active, which tells you how often this situation is exactly the one you are in. If the amount at stake is a £15 domain renewal and a rebuild, the £750 route rarely makes sense. If the domain is the name of your business and has been for fifteen years, it might.

If the company has been dissolved

If Companies House shows the designer's company as dissolved, the domain may no longer belong to anyone you can negotiate with. Government guidance is blunt: "Property, cash and any other assets owned by a company when it is dissolved automatically pass to the Crown." That is bona vacantia. In England and Wales, outside the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the Treasury Solicitor deals with it; in Scotland it is the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, and in Northern Ireland the Crown Solicitor's Office.

There are two ways back. The company can be restored, and then "the company comes back to life, bona vacantia no longer exists and the asset belongs to the company again". Or, if you were a former member, shareholder or liquidator, you can buy the asset from the Bona Vacantia Division at open market value. Neither is quick. For most small businesses in this position, the practical answer is to check whether the domain is still renewable, and if it is genuinely gone, choose a new domain and redirect your marketing rather than spend months on a restoration.

Getting the website itself back

Two separate questions here: can you get the files, and are you allowed to reuse them. On the files, if you pay the hosting company directly you can usually get a copy by proving you own the account. If the site is on a builder, the answer is mostly no. Wix says plainly that "In order for your site to work properly, it needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers", and that "Currently, it is not possible to export blog posts to other platforms". Squarespace will export site content to an .xml file and products and contacts to .csv, but not the design, and "It's not possible to export images or uploaded videos from your site in bulk".

On the permission question, UK copyright law says the author of a work is its first owner, with an exception where the work was made by an employee in the course of their employment. A freelance designer is not your employee, so unless you have an assignment, the copyright in what they made is theirs. And under section 90(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, "An assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor". Paying an invoice is not an assignment. Your own words, your own photos and your own logo are still yours; the code and the layout may well not be. That is one more reason a rebuild is often the cleaner path.

The order I would actually do it in

• Renew the domain, or get it renewed, before anything else. Nothing on this list matters if it drops.
• Look it up, record the registrar, the expiry date and the contact email, and screenshot it.
• Send one clear written request with a deadline: registrant transfer or registrar change, the domain name, an offer to pay the fee.
• If the domain is in your name, move it to a registrar you control through Nominet Online Services.
• Get control of DNS, then stand up a replacement site somewhere new and test it on a temporary address.
• Switch DNS to the new site, and keep the old email working through the move.
• Only then consider the DRS, and only if you have rights in the name and the money at stake justifies it.

If you are at step four and want the mechanics in detail, I have written them up in how to transfer a .uk domain. If your designer is contactable and you are simply moving on, the calmer version of this is what to ask for when you leave your web designer. And the reason this keeps happening is worth understanding too: do you actually own your website. If you need the replacement built, that is what I do, from £199 sites you own.