My cynical opinion, it was finally taken down after the owners (who seemed to be awol), were given an offer they couldn't refuse from a third party, to just let it die. Perhaps the old site was preventing some revenue from being collected.
My cynical view is this: the owners had basically lost interest in the whole thing, pepipoo was effectively created for criminal cases when there were many arguable defences and tactics that made it worthwhile. With virtually all loopholes closed (except the unsigned route in Scotland), they simply lost interest and moved on to other things, whether that is setting up a new business, grandchildren or whatever else we will likely never know. The last meaningful contact from the pepipoo owners was when Fredd put the "
thank you to NHS workers" link at the top of the forum banner at some point in 2020, in the middle of a COVID lockdown.
There were some later posts from the someone claiming to be the owners of the site, but I'm not sure I saw anything posted from Fredd's account ever again.
It seems likely that the £30k that was sat in the company was distributed out (again, maybe for the grandchildren?) and the company was dissolved, in all likelihood because it made no sense to keep paying for accountants and companies house fees and penalties if the whole thing had (as far as the owners were concerned) ran its course.
Ultimately the owners of pepipoo never made any succession plans and never expressed any interest in passing the site on to anyone else once their personal interest in the site had elapsed, so it was always bound to die once they decided to dedicate themselves to other things.