From receipt of the first letter from Companies House to the company being struck is likely to take around four months. This process was accelerated in Directors used to have three months following publication of the strike off notice to object to the striking off. That can have serious consequences, including:. In the first instance, if you receive a formal letter from Companies House asking for company accounts or your confirmation statement to be filed and you want to continue trading, you should respond immediately.
If the process has progressed to the point where a strike off notice has been issued against your company, the action you take will be determined by your plans for the company going forward. If you no longer have a need for the company and are happy for it to be closed down, you could simply allow the process to run its course. Failure to repay all the creditors before the company is struck off could lead to the company being reinstated by a creditor to face formal liquidation proceedings.
That will result in a lengthy investigation into your running of the company, with any wrongdoing potentially leading to your disqualification as a director and personal liability for company debts.
On the other hand, if you want the company to continue trading, you should send a suspension application to Companies House. Depending on what prompted the strike off notice in the first place, you may be required to file missing accounts or confirmation statements to bring your account up to date.
If your application to suspend the strike off application is successful, your company will remain active and continue to trade as usual. It may also be in the interests of company creditors such as HMRC to object to its striking off. Creditors are likely to want to apply to object and suspend the application so they can recover the money they are owed before the company is closed.
If the company is removed from the Companies House Register, any remaining creditors will have to write off the money they are owed as a bad debt or apply to reinstate the company via a court order, which can be a time-consuming and costly process.
It may be impossible to find an interested party to facilitate a sale. If there are few assets then applying to strike off the company will be the easier way to close it down. The process of striking off a limited company is relatively simple and applies for a public limited company, a private limited company, or a limited liability partnership LLP.
It takes at least three months for a limited company to be struck off the Companies House register. Once the completed DS01 form has been submitted and assuming all the details are correct, Companies House will send acknowledgement in the post.
If no objections are received by the company director from interested parties during that time, another notice will be published and the company will be dissolved. HMRC is clear a company cannot be struck off if there are debts. Creditors are likely to object to a strike off and this will mean the procedure cannot be completed until this is resolved.
Directors may not know which creditor has objected and Companies House will not provide the details. HMRC may well be the most likely to object if they have not been notified and agreed to this. Companies House make it clear that striking off should not be seen as a cheap alternative to insolvent liquidation. The company strike off procedure assumes the directors or company accountants have followed the correct process which is to send all company creditors the DS01 form prior to dissolution, alerting them to the intention to strike off.
If this part of the procedure is not followed it can lead to serious potential problems in the future. In the case where a company has been officially struck off but has outstanding debt, the creditor has the right to apply to have the company restored to the Register.
After this point, the creditor can petition to have the company wound up through formal insolvency proceedings and have the company director investigated. In addition, penalties can be backdated to the time the tax arrears started. This notice will state that, unless reason to the contrary is demonstrated, the limited company will be struck off the register two months from the date of the publication of the notice.
Once it is struck off the register, another gazette notice will be published, after which point the company will be dissolved. Company dissolutions are not always voluntary. If directors do not file their accounts and fail to reply to warnings from Companies House, businesses can be struck off the Companies House register and will cease to exist, even if they are still trading. There can be serious consequences that include:. A dormant company is one that has registered with Companies House but has never generated an income or carried on any trading activity of any kind.
Objections can also be raised by other interested parties such as: Creditors who have unpaid bills with the company.
Anyone who has proof that the company has traded, or changed its name within the last 3 months. Any interested party who was not informed by the directors of the application to strike-off the company. Anyone who is currently engaged in legal proceedings with the company, or is taking action against the company to recover debts.
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