Changes to the registered office addresses rules mean that companies must have an ‘appropriate address’ as their registered office or face fines of up to £1,000.
Under the new rules, all companies registering with Companies House must ensure their address is an ‘appropriate address’ which means that in the ordinary course of events:
- a document addressed to the company, and delivered there by hand or by post, would be expected to come to the attention of a person acting on behalf of the company; and
- the delivery of documents there is capable of being recorded by the obtaining of an acknowledgement of delivery.
If the company’s registered office address does not meet these requirements, this means the address is not appropriate.
Companies House is able to act against the company and its officers if they break the rules. There are fines of up to £1,000 for failing to comply with the rules which are set out in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.
The guidance states: ‘If we’re satisfied a company’s registered office is not appropriate, we’ll change the registered office address to a default address, held at Companies House. If a company’s registered office is moved to the default address, they must provide an appropriate address with evidence of proprietary ownership within 28 days, or we could start the process to strike the company off the register.’
Any company using an accountant’s, solicitor’s or another third-party provider’s address as their registered office must make sure the address service provided meets the requirements for an appropriate registered office address. It will no longer be possible to use a Royal Mail PO Box, and equivalent services offered by other parties, as a registered office address.
The Companies House registrar has greater powers to query and challenge information that appears to be incorrect or inconsistent with information held. In future they will be able to remove information more quickly, if that information is inaccurate, incomplete, false or fraudulent.
There will be stronger checks on company names which may give a false or misleading impression to the public. This will improve the accuracy and quality of the data held and help to tackle the misuse of company names.
For any companies abusing the rules, annotations will be added to the register to let users know about potential issues with the information that has been supplied.
While the rules affect new registrants, Companies House will also be taking steps to clean up the register, using data matching to identify and remove inaccurate information.
A new identity verification process will also come into effect this autumn. More on that in next week’s ‘news from the barn’. The rules are part of a range of measures introduced in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act to improve the accuracy and quality of the data on Companies House registers in a bid to tackle economic crime.
There will be serious consequences if a company does not respond to a formal request from Companies House for more information. This could include:
- a financial penalty up to £1,000;
- an annotation on the company’s record; and
There will also be serious consequences for a company if their registered office is not an appropriate address.
You have been warned!
