Companies House

All limited companies in the UK must be registered with Companies House, which is the Executive Agency of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) of the United Kingdom. All limited companies must also file their annual statements and returns, both of which are public records.

The system of company registration in the UK started in 1844. The legislation covering company registration is the Companies Act 1985, with updates added by the Companies Act 1989 and subsequently the Companies Act 2006, which is currently being put into effect from 2007–2009.

There are over 2 million companies that are registered with Companies House. The organization was one of the earliest to implement the electronic registration and company formation process and now over 83% of its companies are being formed electronically and over 40% are filing the forms electronically.

There has been a significant rise in company formation agencies such as Companyformations24.7, which has adapted its services to facilitate the electronic filing of company formation and registration documents at its site companyformations247.co.uk.

There are three main offices of Companies House – its office in Cardiff handles all registrations for companies located in the UK, its office in Edinburgh handles all registrations of companies located in Scotland and its office in Belfast handles all registrations of companies located in Northern Ireland.

There is an additional Company House office in Wales, which has the Compliance Unit, Late Filing Penalties, Prosecuting Solicitors and the E-Filing Team. This office does not accept any postal deliveries for registration of companies. The London office of Company House is only for filing and viewing documents that are processed in Cardiff.

The Registrar of Companies is Gareth Jones for England and Wales, and Dorothy Blair for Scotland. In Northern Ireland, all limited companies need to be registered through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment and are subject to Northern Ireland Law. There is no electronic filing of documents in Northern Ireland companies as yet, and the filing process and fee structure differs from the UK standard.

There are several different types of companies that can be formed, such as a public limited company, private company limited by shares, private company limited by guarantee, unlimited company, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, societas Europaea, community interest company and royal charter.

WebFiling is the process of filing company information online to Company House, which is a good way to save costs on your annual return. There is no charge to submit documents using WebFiling – one is only required to register online at the site and go through some security protocol to authenticate the account with Companies House.

Companies House software filing system simplifies the process of submitting documents via email. All registered companies have access to Companies House Direct, a database of information on companies and the industry. The Company House Direct service is like having your own database, an added advantage. With its diverse knowledge of Companies House policies, Compayformations247.co.uk is best suited to handle the complete procedure regarding company formation and registration.