29 February 2024

Transparency reforms are being introduced at Companies House as part of the second Economic Crime Bill which received Royal Assent in October 2023. These reforms will have radical implications in terms of the administration of companies and other corporate bodies in the UK, being designed to improve the quality and value of financial information on the register.

The various measures will be phased in at different times, however Companies House have announced that they are aiming to introduce the first set of changes on 4 March 2024. The first changes include:

  • Greater powers to query and challenge information that appears to be incorrect or inconsistent with the information Companies Households.
  • Stronger checks on company names which may give a false or misleading impression to the public.
  • All companies must have an appropriate address as their registered office at all times, namely companies will no longer be able to use a PO Box as a registered office from 4 March.
  • A requirement for all companies/LLPs to supply a registered email address to Companies House via their next annual confirmation statement, with a duty to maintain his in the same way as a registered office. Where Dodd & Co file confirmation statements on behalf of clients, the default position is that we will enter out own internal email address with any relevant correspondence subsequently forwarded on. However if you would prefer to supply your own business email address please let us know by 4 March. If you prepare and submit your own annual confirmation statement you will be required to enter an email address the next time this is due for completion. Email addresses will not be published on the public register.
  • A requirement to confirm that intended future activities will be lawful via the annual confirmation statement.
  • The ability to annotate the register to let users know about potential issues with information supplied.
  • Taking steps to clean up the register, using data matching to identify and remove inaccurate information.
  • New powers to share data with other government departments and law enforcement agencies.

For clients we file annual confirmation statements on behalf of, we will be revising our approval procedures prior to submission to Companies House.

We await further timelines on the implementation of other significant reform areas, including mandatory identify verification and removal of the profit and loss filing exemption in small and micro sized accounts, with certain matters requiring secondary legislation, systems implementation and further guidance. We will of course keep you up to date as and when there are any further developments.

As part of this Companies House fees will also be increasing (quite substantially!) from 1 May. Please see further details of these increases here.

If you have any queries regarding these changes please speak to your usual Dodd & Co contact or you can speak to Steven Barnes on 01228 530913 or email him at steven.barnes@doddaccountants.co.uk