Reforms to companies house is your company compliant?

21 March 2020

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy recently published a consultation on proposals to enhance the role of Companies House. To strengthen the UK’s ability to combat economic crime. This would bring the most important changes to company law since the Companies House register was created in 1844.

Following huge concerns over, how the existing lack of transparency can hide the misuse of UK registered companies, inaccurate information held at Companies House and abuse of directors and shareholders personal information, it was inevitable that steps had to be taken to safe guard against this.

Why should businesses be transparent?

Corporate transparency around who is setting up, managing and controlling companies would give Companies House the ability to improve the detection of possible criminal behaviour. Greater assurance over the identity of who controls a corporate entity also enables Companies House to link the records of people with multiple roles across different companies. Having sight of the bigger picture on specific individuals could highlight a need to exchange intelligence between Companies House and UK Law Enforcement bodies.

There will be an improvement in the accuracy and usability of data on the register. Companies House can query information before it is entered onto the register, whereas previously they took information and believed them to be correct in good faith. More importantly, they will also be afforded the right to question entries on the register for existing companies if they choose.

Those business owners who have nothing to hide should not be concerned, however they may get questioned by Companies House as a result of these new checks throwing up unintentional inaccuracies in a company’s registers which have previously gone undetected.

The question is are you compliant? How would you know?

The good news is that the most common mistakes can be quite easily fixed, from correcting mistakes made on incorporation forms, refiling incorrect returns to updating shareholder information.

Company Health Check

There are a variety of options available to make sure your company record is up to date, so if you need an expert to cast an eye over your company’s statutory documents and registers we will be happy to conduct a Company Health Check for you.

To check you comply

Contact Katherine Herrera today or call 01604 273782

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