Companies House

Our fees have changed so they accurately reflect our costs. Companies House is a Trading Fund and must operate on the basis of cost recovery. As a result of efficiencies made by Companies House, coupled with high volumes of customers using electronic services, cost savings are being passed on to customers in the form of reduced fees.

On 1 October 2012, the new fee was applied to an annual return delivered electronically under the Companies Act 2006, received on or after that date.

On 1 October 2012, the new fee was applied to incorporation documentation, delivered electronically, received on or after that date.

No apart from changes to the electronic incorporation fees and the electronic annual return fee no other registration fees have been changed.

Following a review of costs we calculated that we needed to reduce the fees relating to electronic submission of an annual return and software incorporation by £1 from £14 to £13. This represents an overall saving for the UK economy of £2.858m p.a.

The paper registration fees have remained static despite the low volumes of paper transactions now being filed (97%+ Incorporation and Annual Returns are filed electronically). This is because we took into consideration the effects of further decreases in paper volumes, when we calculated costs as part of the April 2011 amending fees regulations. As a result there is no need to further increase paper fees at this time.

It is a strategic aim of Companies House to provide as much company data as possible, available free of charge in line with the Government's Digital Agenda.

Following a review of costs we calculated that we needed to either reduce search fees by a few pence across the board or take the opportunity to provide more free information in line with the overall strategic aim and pass on the savings to searchers.

We took the decision to provide company director information by company and appointment reports free of charge, passing on £1.992m savings p.a. on to searchers.

In line with this strategy we recently released free bulk access to company data. This is already provided free of charge within our web based search products and Unique Reference Indicators (URI) via a Free Public Data  Product.

NOTE: There is still a £1 fee associated with searching an individual director's appointments.

We could not change the bulk URA fees on 30 April 2012 because can only be set in regulations, and we had not received ministerial approval, at that time, to implement the fees regulations. We also needed to wait for a parliamentary Common Commencement Date (CCD) for implementing regulations eg 6 April or 1 October.

We have removed the fees associated with all fee bearing 1985 Act or 1986 Order documents, with the exception of Form 466 and LLP 466, because the volumes of these documents are so low that it has become disproportionate to maintain the IT and finance systems for so few filings.

We have removed the software filing process for 1985 Act or 1986 Order filings because due to the very low volumes of these legacy documents being filed the costs of maintaining and supporting the IT systems used for this process are disproportionate compared to the volume of information being filed in this manner.

As well as removing the software filing process we have also removed the fees associated with all fee bearing documents filed under the Companies 1985 and the Companies (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. Therefore from 1 October 2012 the following fee bearing forms have been made available to file free of charge: