Companies House: ECCTA 2023 changes begin as of March 2024

Companies House have confirmed changes following ECCTA 2023 to be introduced from March 2024. Is your business ready?

Jess Field, Paralegal in the Coodes Corporate and Commercial Team, recently reported on the Companies House announcement of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) 2023. Back in October, she explained what these changes will mean for businesses, although changes such as ID verification will take some time to be introduced. However, some of the changes this Act proposes could come into force as soon as early 2024.

Companies House Update March 2024

The Registrar of Companies House has now issued an update and announced some of the changes that will be introduced from March 2024. It’s important for businesses to be aware of these upcoming changes. These include:

• Companies House will have greater powers to query information from businesses. Furthermore, they will be able to scrutinise and reject information submitted to them.
• There will be stronger checks on company name. For example, the use of a company name that includes any names that could be used to facilitate crimes could be prohibited.
• Companies must have an appropriate registered address at all times and will not be able to use a PO Box address.
• Companies will have to supply a registered email address.
• On incorporation, companies will be required to confirm they are forming the company for a lawful purpose. In addition to their annual confirmation statement, the company will also need to confirm that its future activities will be lawful.
• Companies House will be able to make annotations on the register to let users know about potential issues with the information supplied to them.
• They will be taking steps to clean up the register by using data matching to identify and remove inaccurate information.
• The ability to share data with other government departments and law enforcement agencies.

Next Steps

Further information about these initial changes will be announced in due course. We will be keeping a close eye on this as well as future changes. We will also ensure all of our clients are kept up to date. More information regarding the ECCTA 2023 updates can be found on the Companies House website.

If you would like more information on how the latest Companies House announcement could affect your business, Coodes can help. Reach out to Jess Field, Paralegal, from Coodes’ Corporate and Commercial team via email or call 01326 214025.