FILING OF COMPANY DOCUMENTATION

In light of the current postal strikes there has become a heightened need for company directors and company secretaries to understand their legal obligations with regard to filing company documentation on time.

As discussed in a previous bulletin Companies House now enforces strict penalties for the submission of overdue accounts, additionally they have abolished the potential availability of a 14 day concessionary period for incorrectly filed accounts.

It is the responsibility of the company to file their annual accounts on time and there are only limited circumstances where Companies House will accept as sufficient a reason for a delay in filing them. The fact that there is a postal strike will not provide a sufficient excuse to avoid the fines.

Companies House wants to encourage companies to file their accounts in plenty of time to meet the deadlines. Companies who often find that their accounts are filed very near to their accounting deadline may wish to consider reorganising the accounts approval process to ensure that the company accounts are approved with adequate time to file them, despite postal strikes or other delays.

The new Companies Act places greater emphasis on the use of e-communications and the internet for company communications and as such it appears that a growing number of companies have begun submitting their company documentation via email or fax. Whilst Companies House offers a dedicated online filing facility it is not always possible for all documents to be submitted in this way and there will be occasion when original signed hard copies have to be sent. On these occasions companies should not submit documents to Companies House via email or fax. Such documents must be submitted via post.

Companies House does not accept documents submitted by email or fax and have indicated that companies will not avoid late filing penalties by sending documents in this way however well intentioned or innocent their error in doing so.

Guidance from Companies House can be found at:

Companies House