Changes to company filing requirements taking place this month

From 30th June 2016, further provisions of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 will come into force which will abolish the requirement for companies to file an annual return with Companies House. Instead, a company will need to file a “confirmation statement”. Below is a summary of this change and other changes, which company officers should be aware of.

What is a confirmation statement?

The confirmation statement will be a statement from the company that since the filing of the last compliance statement, no changes have been made to the company’s officers, registered office, place where registers are kept and or people with significant control (“PSC”) (for more information about the PSC register see our article Companies must hold register of ‘People with Significant Control: http://www.machins.co.uk/news/companies-must-hold-register-of-people-with-significant-control.html)

Companies will be able to simply confirm that no changes have been made in the last year or that changes have been reported when they took place. Any changes that were not reported at the time that they took place should be filed at the same time as the confirmation statement. In practice the confirmation statement will not differ hugely from the annual return, but other points to note include:

• companies can file a confirmation statement at any time, rather than having a fixed filing date as for the annual return
• companies must file the confirmation statement within twelve months of the last confirmation statement. After 14 days of this due date, a company will face penalties from Companies House
• the new PSC register filing requirement coincides with implementation of filing confirmation statements

Other changes

Private limited companies will also have the option, from the end of this month, to keep certain information on the public register, instead of on separately maintained registers. This includes:

• the register of members
• the register of directors
• the register of secretaries
• the register of director’s residential addresses

This option can be chosen at incorporation or at any time following incorporation by the company.

The statement of capital, which sets out the financial information relating to the company’s share capital and the rights attached to the company’s shares, is simplified so that the requirement to specify the amount paid up and unpaid on a share is removed and instead a company must show the total amount unpaid on the total number of shares.

For further information on the topics covered in this article or any other aspects of corporate commercial law, please contact Sarah Liddiard, Solicitor, Commercial Department on 01582 514303 or [email protected]