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The Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006 (“the Regulations”) came into effect on 1st January 2007. Among other things, the Regulations require companies and limited liability partnerships (“LLPs”) to include specified information (such as their name and registered office address) in emails and on their websites.

Background

Section 349 of the Companies Act 1985 requires that a company’s name must appear on all business letters, notices and other official communications, bills of exchange, promissory notes, endorsements, cheques, orders for goods, bills of parcels, invoices, receipts and letters of credit. In addition, under section 351 of the Companies Act 1985 a company must include in all business letters and order forms details of its place of registration, registered number and registered office address. Investment companies must also include the fact that they are such companies, and companies exempt from using the word “limited” must specify that they are limited companies. Similar provisions apply to LLPs. Failure to provide this information could result in the company, any defaulting officer of the company or the LLP being liable to pay a fine. Furthermore, section 188 of the Insolvency Act 1986 provides that when a company is being wound up, every invoice, order for goods, and business letter issued by or on behalf of the company or on which the name of the company appears must contain a statement that the company is being wound up.

The Regulations

Under the Regulations, section 349 has been extended so that all order forms and websites of a company must include its name. In addition, its name must appear on all of the listed documents, regardless of whether they are electronic, hard copy or in any other form.

Similarly, section 351 has been extended so that the listed details must be included on all of the websites, business letters and order forms of a company, regardless of whether they are electronic, hard copy or in any other form. Section 188 of the Insolvency Act requires the appropriate statement to be made on all websites, and all invoices, orders, business letters etc of a company, regardless of whether in hard copy or electronic form.

Comment

While many companies already include the specified information on their websites and electronic documents, there are undoubtedly many companies which do not - and they now need to take steps to ensure compliance and display the appropriate information on their business documents and on their websites. This should be done expediently as the date by which this should have been done was 1st January 2007. Given the uncertainty at this stage of the scope of “business letters”, the best advice has got to be to ensure that the information is contained in all of a company’s (or LLP’s) business communications, including emails. Concerning the display of the information on a company’s (or LLP’s) website, this has not been prescribed - the Regulations merely provide that the specified information must be displayed on the website. This would seem to indicate that the display of the information in the “Legal” section of the website or on the home page should be sufficient and that there is no need to display the information on every page of the website as long as the information can be readily accessed by hyperlink from every page.

For further enquiries please contact Genevieve Mead on 01892 701308 or email genevieve.mead@
ts-p.co.uk.

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