Important Information Regarding Company Directorship

In October 2008 Companies House implemented the first stages of their “Human Directorship” rule. This amounted to no company being incorporated after this date with just a corporate appointment. Now two years on Companies House are looking to end a period of grace whereby all companies with just a corporate appointment are likely to be struck off.

So what does this mean for your Private Limited Company? Well firstly you can relax if, like most companies, you already have an actual person appointed as a director. Secretaries and Shareholders can be as corporate as you like, this relates only to directors. The number of directors you have is irrelevant, as long as you have one human director, you can have as many corporate appointments as you wish. Therefore if your company already has a human appointment there’s no need to worry, you can stop reading…now.

But what if your company does just have a corporate appointment? Well, there’s still no need to panic. You just need to make sure a human appointment is made by the 30th of September. There are two ways to do this:

1. If your company is on the CompaniesMadeSimple portal, simply login, access your company and appoint your director from there. Once submitted to Companies House (submitting it should take no more than one minute) the appointment should be accepted within three working hours. If your company is not on our system, simply register at www.companiesmadesimple.com and choose to import a company. All you need is your company authentication code. Again, this should take no more than a minute. Once imported just follow the instructions as above.
2. No access to a computer (we’ll ignore the fact you’re reading this)? You can download the relevant form here. Print it off, fill it in and post it to Companies House.

So that’s how to make the appointments. But what if you do not actually have someone willing to act as the company director? Well we can help with that too with our Nominee Director Service. With this service you can appoint our nominee human director, meeting the criteria set out by Companies House. We’ll send you all the relevant forms including the Power Of Attorney which gives total control of the company to you. We are director in name only.

Once again, there is no need to panic but be aware that come October, if your company does not have at least one person appointed as a director, not only are you putting your company at risk of a hefty fine, you’re also risking dissolution.

NB. You can still keep your corporate director; you just need to have a human director as well.