Published: 19 February 2024 4:02 pm  Author: Oliver Stanley

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2023 – Kudocs is ready for implementation

The first changes to be implemented by Companies House under the new Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (2023) (“ECCTA”) are due to come into effect on 4 March 2024.

In summary, these changes are:

1. Each entity will be required to provide a registered email address to Companies House as part of their core information.
2. Each company will be required to confirm that they are carrying out a “lawful purpose” in their business activities.
3. Each company will be required to confirm that their registered address is an “appropriate address”.
4. PO Box addresses will not be permitted as registered office addresses – either at incorporation or in applications to change registered address.

For more detail on these changes see here.

Kudocs is ready for these changes!  We have made all the necessary updates to the system so that any new company incorporations, confirmation statements or changes of registered address are compliant.   You will not notice much, as the changes are pretty minor, but you will notice that some new questions are now included in certain processes in Kudocs.

You’ll notice that some of these changes are already live in Kudocs.  We have decided to bring our changes live early so that you can get used to them.  Don’t worry – we are not yet submitting the data to Companies House – we will enable that part of the system as soon as Companies House is ready to receive the data (currently planned for 4 March 2024).

The “lawful purpose” statement will need to be confirmed for all new company incorporations and any confirmation statement.  It is an active tick box that needs to be selected each time (ie you can’t tick it at incorporation and it will remain ticked for ever!).

The registered email address can be added to the entity settings and it will remain there unless/ until changed.  If you want to prepare in advance, you can add the registered email address now (before 4 March 2024), but it will only be submitted to Companies House when the entity files its next confirmation statement.