Every now and again we post something on the Blog
and have to directly contact clients about it at the same time. This is one such occasion.
We have today heard from Companies House that they will not accept combined annual and
final progress reports.
We had previously understood from the regulators
that if an IP was unable to issue the draft final report before an annual
progress report fell due and he therefore needed to produce both an annual report
and a draft final report, the regulators considered that it was possible to
issue a combined annual and draft final report.
We have spent some time coaching clients on how to achieve this and we
have commented on the matter on the Blog.
We have become aware of the Registrar refusing some annual reports, but
in the fog of rejections of all sorts of documents that seem to be coming out
of Companies House recently, we have only today received a firm answer that
they will not accept combined reports.
Despite the regulators being happy with the concept, the Registrar
refuses to recognise them in law as they do not meet the regulations that
govern the operation of their Register.
So, what should you do now? The easiest way to avoid the problem is to
issue your draft final report early enough to avoid the problem. As long as it issued before the anniversary
date you won’t need to do an annual progress report at all.
If you have missed the anniversary date, our
official line has to be that you should file separate annual and final reports
with the Registrar to minimise the risk of getting them filed without
rejection. However, we have seen so many
rejections of documents by the Registrar for numerous different reasons that we
cannot be sure that even a separate annual progress report would be accepted
first time, so a more practical answer might be that you see what you can get
filed by trial and error. You may, for
instance, get a combined report filed as long as you send it in twice: once
headed up as an annual report and referred to as such in any covering letter
and in the accompanying R&P; and once headed up as the final report with
the dates and headings adjusted accordingly.
We will continue to try to get the Insolvency
Service’s view and if they agree with the Registrar we will see if there is any
chance of the legislation being amended to make the whole filing system easier,
but we, like many of you, are getting thoroughly fed up with the whole
procedure. Surely it would be better for
the Registrar to file whatever you send and the regulators and Insolvency
Service deal with any deficiencies through the normal monitoring channels? The sort of points that the Registrar is
getting involved in do not have any impact on the integrity of the register and
are largely at the end of a case when very few stakeholders are still
interested. Wasting hours returning and
re-working reports has to be contrary to public policy on better regulation.
This
is the bottom line though…Companies House will not accept combined
reports…unless you know different!!
