Annual returns – new form for returns made up to a date on or after 1 October 2008
Last October some changes were introduced by the Companies Act 2006 which allowed companies to refuse to supply a copy of their register of members in certain situations. The effectiveness of this change has been hampered by the fact that shareholder addresses have to be supplied on the annual return, so BERR has decided to amend the Companies Act 1985 to stop companies having to provide this information on Form 363.
What changes?
The changes apply to annual returns made up to date on or after 1 October 2008.
The information to be provided differs depending on whether the company is traded on a regulated market – eg The Stock Exchange (but not AIM) – or not.
A non-traded company must provide the name of every member, number of shares held, shares transferred during the period and date of any transfers. The address of the member no longer needs to be provided. So most private companies and any non-traded public companies will fall within this category.
A public company whose shares are traded on a regulated market must provide the same information AND must also provide the address of any member who holds at least 5% of the share capital.
The new form available from our forms on the web facility .
What form should I use?
The existing version of the form must be used if the made up date of the return is before 1 October 2008, even if it is filed after 1 October 2008.
The new form is only used for return dates on or after 1 October 2008.
Companies House will reject any form which contains shareholder address details when this is not required. This is because it would be a breach of the Data Protection Act for Companies House to put personal information on the public record which is not required by statute.
For more information please contact Helen Goose on 0117 918 1322 or email her at helen_goose@jordans.co.uk.
