Impact assessment

Business impact target: non-qualifying regulatory proposals: 13 December 2019 to 16 December 2020

Updated 20 December 2022

Excluded category*	Summary of measure(s), including any impact data where available**
Measures certified as being below de minimis (measures with an EANDCB below +/- £5 million)	Report a discrepancy about a beneficial owner on the PSC register by an obliged entity (Fifth Money Laundering Directive) January 2020. This online service enables obliged entities, such as company formation agents, financial institutions and estate agents, who are required, under the fifth Anti Money Laundering Regulations, to report discrepancies in the PSC register kept at Companies House with the information they have been given about beneficial owners of entities they are undertaking customer due diligence on. This is a legal requirement on the obliged entities and the service enables discrepancy reports to be given online to enable an efficient reporting and feedback loops for those caught by the legislation.
Measures certified as being below de minimis (measures with an EANDCB below +/- £5 million)	Emergency Filing Service (upload service) April 2020 Companies House has developed a temporary service to upload a document electronically as an emergency response to the coronavirus outbreak. This service includes documents that were not already covered by the current electronic filing services. It allows – - a secure sign-in to the service using the existing free Companies House Account service - auto populating company information when uploading a document based on the company number entered - developing a form type selection screen to allow users to easily select the form they wish to file - developing a secure upload service that allows users to attach PDF versions of forms and evidence (if required) - providing confirmation screens and emails, so users can be confident the submission has been received - allowing authentication of filings using the company authentication code Until the service went live delivery of certain paper forms was only available by post or in person at the Cardiff HQ or one of the regional offices. The temporary service allows an upload of completed forms electronically and sends them to Companies House directly and instantly. The upload service helps protect the welfare of our customers and employees by removing the dependency on paper forms, the postal services and in-person contact. The service is continually being updated with more form types as and when the development of them is completed.
Fines and penalties	We take compliance action against company directors who do not file their annual accounts and confirmation statement (annual return) on time. We have a target to ensure that 97% of companies have an up to date confirmation statement. In 2019 to 2020: - 97.2% of companies were up to date with filing their confirmation statement - 98.7% of companies filed their annual accounts up to date - 199,137 civil penalties for late filing of accounts by private limited companies were issued and 668 were cancelled 533 civil penalties for public companies were issued and 7 were cancelled.
Casework	We take enforcement action against directors who do not meet their legal obligations. In 2019 to 2020: - 3533 charges were laid in court for failure to deliver accounts - 1910 convictions made - 1233 charges were withdrawn - 1823 were brought to court for failure to deliver a confirmation statement - 1275 convictions made - 578 withdrawn - 3781 directors were summoned to court, 1929 were convicted 3090 companies were involved in proceedings and 1676 companies in which directors were convicted.

*For detailed guidance on the exclusion categories, please see Better regulation framework.

**Complete the summary box as ‘Following consideration of the exclusion category there are no measures for the reporting period that qualify for the exclusion’ where this is appropriate.