The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act changes are due... Are you ready?
The upcoming changes are:
- new rules for registered office addresses;
- requirement for all companies to supply a registered email address;
- new lawful purpose statements on incorporation and annual confirmation statements;
- increased Companies House powers to query information and request supporting evidence;
- stronger checks on company names;
- the ability to annotate the register when information appears confusing or misleading;
- a register clean up by using data matching to identify and remove inaccurate information; and
- data sharing with other government departments and law enforcement agencies.
Three of the upcoming changes that will immediately effect all registered companies and any new companies are:
New rules for registered office addresses
All companies must have an ‘appropriate address’ as their registered office, such that any documents that are addressed to the “appropriate address” should be expected to come to the attention of a person acting on behalf of the company and recorded by an acknowledgement of delivery.
The change will mean you will not be able to use a PO Box as your registered office address.
Companies that do not have appropriate registered office address could be struck off the register.
Registered email address
All companies must give a registered email address to Companies House and new companies will need to give a registered email address upon incorporation.
Confirmation statement forms will include a field for existing companies to give a registered email address. Incorporation forms will include a field to give a registered email address upon formation of the company.
Companies will have a duty to maintain a registered email address and not doing so will amount to the committing of an offence under the ECCT. The address will not be published on the public register.
Statement of lawful purpose
The subscribers (shareholders) of new companies will be required to confirm they are forming the company for a lawful purpose and existing companies will need to make a lawful purpose statement when they file their next confirmation statement.
The new measure is to make it clear to all companies that they have duty to operate in a lawful way.
How can we help you?
Law Debenture provides registered office address services at both our London and Manchester offices, which meet ECCT requirements.
Our robust annual compliance service comprised of filing of the annual confirmation statement, statutory accounts and two routine corporate changes, also includes the use of our company secretarial inbox as a registered email address facility, which again is sufficient for ECCT purposes.
Additionally, we have a dedicated team who deal with the incorporation of new entities and are able to walk you through the details required when forming a new company, including the lawful purpose statement.
For more information on our company secretarial services, please reach out to Chelsea Chivers and Sharon McKinney.
Safecall, our wholly owned whistleblowing hotline, training and investigations business, help organisations comply with all major whistleblowing regulatory requirements and legislation. For more information on the corporate criminal liability reforms through the ECCT, please see link here or reach out to Chancelle Blakely.
