Release Bulletins and Support Bulletins

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act — Support Bulletin 02/02/24

We'll shortly be releasing version 24.0 of Digita Company Secretarial. It will help you comply with changes coming into effect on 4 March 2024 (subject to the passing of secondary legislation).
You may need to take action for some companies before these changes take effect.

Changes in the upcoming release

  • Registered office addresses — we've added a checkbox on the
    Company details
     to help you confirm that the provided registered office address is appropriate. When you complete a Change of Address form (AD01/ LL AD01), this will ensure that the checkbox on the form is marked.
  • Registered email address — we've added a field in
    Company details
     to help you record this information. You'll need to report this to Companies House so we've added validations and warnings to remind you to check. We've also added a column to the
    Companies active
     view grid, to help you filter and sort by registered email.
  • Statement of lawful purpose — we've added a checkbox on the
    Confirmation statement
     window to help you to make this statement. This is mandatory, so you'll need to check this box to continue. You'll get a warning if you don't complete it.
  • Form updates — we've included updated forms in the release. Where there have been minor changes and Companies House has confirmed it will accept the previous version of the form, we've not updated these forms.
We've included these changes for LLPs where needed.

Review companies with a PO Box before 4 March 2024

Companies with a PO Box listed as their Registered Office Address should update this before 4 March 2024 (or the date of these changes being brought in, if later).
Companies House has stated:
Companies that do not have an appropriate registered office address could be struck off the register. When we identify an inappropriate registered office address, we’ll change it to a default address held at Companies House. The company must then provide an appropriate address, with evidence of a link to that address, within 28 days. If we do not receive this evidence, we’ll start the process to strike the company off the register.[https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/22/get-ready-for-changes-to-uk-company-law/]
You can run different reports to review this information. For example, you could select
Reports
,
Address Reports
, then
Address by Registered Office
. We suggest that you contact customers using a PO Box to advise them of the changes and update their address.

Review confirmation statements in progress before 4 March 2024

Companies House has announced that confirmation statements with a confirmation date of 4 March and earlier must include the current pre-ECCT Act details, regardless of when they are filed. Those with a confirmation date of 5 March and later, must include the new ECCT Act information, comprising the lawful purpose statement and, if not previously supplied, the company’s nominated registered email address.
Version 24.0 of Digita Company Secretarial will only produce confirmation statements in the new ECCT Act format that applies to confirmation dates on or after 5 March. We therefore suggest that you:
  • Prepare and file all confirmation statements that have a confirmation date on or before 4 March as early as possible and before upgrading to version 24.0.
  • Don't produce any confirmation statements that have a confirmation date of 5 March or later, until you have upgraded to version 24.

Contact clients to confirm their Registered Email Address

We recommend that you start to contact your clients and ask them what email they would like to use as their company’s Registered Email Address. It will be mandatory for every company.
When you update to Digita Company Secretarial version 24.0, there will be a field to record a company or LLP’s Registered Email Address within the
Company details
 window. It will be included in the next Confirmation Statement that you submit to Companies House.

Release schedule

We will send a newswire when the update is available for download and installation.

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Digita Company Secretarial

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