The latest Annual Report from Companies House shows that 449,000 new companies were incorporated during 2006/07, and that information registered companies had placed on the public record was accessed more than three and a half million times. This level of activity is reflected in significant growth in Companies House’s workload. Companies House plays a key role in holding and making available information about limited companies in England, Scotland and Wales. The effectiveness of its systems is crucial to maintaining consistently high levels of service to its customers and those systems, particularly its website, have continued to improve this year. The annual report demonstrates Companies House’s plans for implementing further improvements to its systems in the coming year.

Gareth Jones, Registrar and Chief Executive at Companies House, said:

"I joined Companies House quite recently and was immediately impressed by the dedication and skill of its workforce, and by their sheer determination to provide first rate services for customers. This is my first Annual Report and it reflects our achievements in a very busy year. The high levels of incorporation reflect the popularity of Great Britain as a place to do business, and the high number of searches made on the companies register demonstrates the value of the information it contains.

"We’ve worked hard to maintain strong levels of compliance with filing requirements, and the use people make of the companies register is a gratifying reflection of our efforts to achieve high levels of compliance and so to maintain the register’s integrity and usefulness.

"We’ve also been working hard to make it easier and more secure for companies to transact their business with us. We can now accept electronically more than 80% of the documents we expect to be filed and our electronic filing systems have security measures built in to help companies protect themselves against fraud."