Annual Return submission changes from 30th June 2016

The yearly submission of the Annual Return to Companies House is being replaced with a new Confirmation Statement on 30th June 2016.

So how does this affect you?
If your Annual Return is due to be prepared up until 30th June 2016 or later you will no longer be able to submit this. Instead, the first date for submission of your new “Confirmation Statement” will be a year after the made up date of your last led Annual Return.

Changes:
• Submission deadline has been reduced from 28 days to 14 DAYS from the due date;
• Any changes in business activity must be reported;
• Information about people with significant control (PCS) must be provided together with confirmation as to why they are a PCS (e.g. majority shareholding);
• Any changes in capital; and
• Once the first one is submitted, you can elect to change your due date to coincide with other filing deadlines; a very welcome change to align return dates.

The normal process of reporting changes in directorship, registered office address etc… will remain the same and should be reported to Companies House as and when the event happens.

This may seem a daunting reporting process at first, however once the above information has been provided you are only required to report changes when submitting subsequent confirmation statements annually and not the same information year after year.

Another welcome change introduced recently by Companies House is that of “Accelerated Strike-Off”. Under old legislation, following the Gazette notice of a strike off application the company was struck off the register after 3 months (subject to no objections being received). This has now been reduced to 2 months from publication of the Gazette notice. So if you are awaiting a company name to become available this will speed up this process. However, if you are the one objecting to the strike off, you will have to act quicker under this change.

If you have any queries regarding the above processes, or would like our assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.