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The Registrar of Companies will strike a company from the Companies House register if it fails to submit accounts or annual returns. The Registrar will also strike off a company if she believes that the company is no longer active or it fails to respond to communications from Companies House.
When a company is stuck off, it ceases to exist, and its assets become ownerless, also known as bona vacantia. Assets that are ownerless belong to the Crown. A struck-off company will lose everything it owns, for example;
Tangible Assets:
Bank accounts in credit
Debtors and other receivables
Other amounts owed to it
Land
Buildings
Stock
Tax losses
Intangible assets:
Domain names
Websites
Intellectual copyright
Trademarks
The administrative restoration process:
A company that has been struck off can be restored by a process known as Administrative Restoration. An application to restore a company must be made within six years of the date it was removed from the company register. The company must also have been trading at the time it was struck off.
A Restoration applicant must write to the treasury solicitor to obtain a bona vacantia waiver letter. The treasury solicitor is asked to confirm that the Crown has no objection to the company being restored and the ownership of the assets being restored to the company. The treasury solicitor will charge £64 for dealing with the application.
If the registered office of the struck off company was within the Duchy estates (Cornwall and Lancaster) and not the Crown’s; the applicant must obtain a bona vacantia waiver letter from Duchy’s solicitors Farrer & Co. The Duchy solicitors charge £150+vat for dealing with the application. Send the waiver letter to the Registrar of Companies along with form RT01 -the application to restore a company. Companies House charge £100 for processing the restoration.
Outstanding returns, accounts and fines
Companies House will make their consent to a company’s restoration subject to that company filing all outstanding documents, such as accounts and annual confirmation statements and to pay all unpaid fines for the late filing of accounts.
Companies that file accounts late at Companies House will incur fines as follows:
These fines are doubled if accounts were filed late in previous years. When a company is struck off, the date on which it is removed is the date that counts for the submission of missing accounts.
Submissions to Companies House
Once a company has been struck off, accounts and annual confirmation statements can only be filed by post. Companies House charge £40 for processing each Annual Confirmation statement.
Administrative Restoration Service
Our fees for our administrative restoration service and related charges are as follows:
We are a member of ACRA, the Association of Company Registration Agents. ACRA is the trade body of company formation agents, founded to promote good practice and provide a forum for its members.
Our membership is a statement of our commitment to the professional standards promoted by ACRA and our fellow members.