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New company name rules come into force

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4th Feb 2015
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Legislation is now in force following consultation on the rules for company and business names.

The new regulations, concerning ‘Sensitive Words and Expressions’ and ‘Names and Trading Disclosures’ came into force on 31 January.

The Company and Business Names: Red Tape Challenge consultation sought views on the future of names regulations in general and invited comments on the options for improving and simplifying them.

It considered the need to maintain the current regulations which set out rules regarding ‘same as’ names and ‘sensitive’ words and expressions.

According to Companies House the widening of the ‘same as’ consent provision now makes it easier for companies in the same group to grant permission to register a proposed name.

Amendments to trading disclosure requirements also means that any company located in an office or other location occupied by six or more companies may make its registered name available for inspection on a register.

Now fewer words are disregarded for the purposes of deciding whether one name is the ‘same as’ another on the register to allow more choice and make name swaps within groups of companies easier.

The words, and their Welsh equivalents, to be removed include:

  • exports
  • group
  • holdings
  • imports
  • international
  • services

Amendments to the list of expressions to be disregarded for the purposes of ‘same as’ (including their Welsh equivalents) are:

  • ‘& Co’
  • ‘& Company’
  • ‘and Co’
  • ‘and Company’

The list of words and expressions now disregarded includes where they are used with brackets, meaning a name which was previously not the ‘same as’ because of the inclusion of brackets is now treated as ‘same as’.

There are also fewer ‘sensitive’ words and expressions. The list no longer includes:

  • abortion
  • authority
  • banknote
  • board
  • data protection
  • disciplinary
  • discipline
  • European
  • giro
  • group
  • holding
  • human rights
  • international
  • national
  • oversight
  • pregnancy termination
  • register
  • registered
  • registration
  • registry
  • regulation
  • rule committee
  • United Kingdom
  • watchdog

Changes to the rules for company names will also affect the schemas used in company incorporation software.

You can find the new schemas on the Companie House schema page.

Last week a High Court ruling found that Companies House was to blame after a Cardiff-based collapsed into administration. The judge ruled that a spelling error caused the 124-year-old Welsh family business to fail after it was wrongly recorded by Companies House as being wound up in 2009.

In 2012 Jennifer Adams wrote an article for AccountingWEB on how important it is to be careful in naming a company.

Replies (2)

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By [email protected]
06th Feb 2015 11:38

UKNRRA

Gosh!  Does this mean I can now register a company called The United Kingdom National Registration and Regulation Authority Ltd and start sending out letters to everybody I can think of, inviting them to pay me their annual registration fee?  Will I have to register it for VAT if it's not actually supplying anything?

Thanks (1)
David Ross
By davidross
06th Feb 2015 13:15

What about "Sheffield" and Return dates

While they were about it they could have got rid of the nonsense that "John Sheffield" has to ask the permission of a dining club in Nick Clegg's constituency.

Also I suggested when Clegg had his (now forgotten) website for useful ideas that there be a simple way to change Annual Return dates in the same easy way that we can change (far more significant) Accounting Dates. Another opportunity missed for sensible deregulation

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