I am sure that you will have seen
the decision in Peter Jones (China) Ltd v Registrar of Companies (click here for a report
on the decision) where the Registrar of Companies was criticised for refusing
to remove a schedule from a Statement of Affairs that was incorrectly filed as
the Administrator had not obtained a Court Order requiring them to do so. Today
we have seen an example of Companies House taking action that we think is
possibly an unintended consequence of the Administrators’ success in that case.
Companies House rejected a Form LIQ03 submitted for filing where the annual report included a request for a decision from creditors, because it included notice and details of the future remuneration approval decision. They asked for the form and report to be resubmitted without the unnecessary documentation.
While this is the only example that we have seen to date, it appears from this that Companies House may now refuse to file any extraneous documents accompanying Companies House Forms that are not required to be filed at Companies House by the insolvency legislation, and may reject any Forms that include such documents. As a result, before uploading Forms and accompanying documents to the Companies House portal, you should remove any extraneous documents that do not form part of the formal notices, reports etc that you are required to file with that particular Companies House Form under the insolvency legislation. That would certainly include notices of decision procedures where you are seeking a decision from creditors at the same time as issuing an annual report. Other examples that immediately spring to mind are: notices of any decision procedure to consider an Administrator’s proposals, since that does not form part of the formal proposals under rule 3.35 and paragraph 49; and copies of Records of Decisions when filing the outcome of a decision procedure to consider the Administrator’s proposals.
If this is a change of policy by Companies House, given the potentially significant consequences for you if you deliver documents late, we thought that we should immediately draw this to your attention. Remember that a document is only delivered to Companies House once it is received by them in a format suitable for filing.
