Every company is required to have a registered office. This is an official address to which Companies House will send any correspondence. It can also be used by anyone wishing to send you a legal document, such as a statutory demand for payment.
The registered office must be a physical place, not just a post office box. It's important that you do receive any documents sent there. A simple option is to use your business premises as your registered office. Companies which outsource filing and record-keeping tasks to an external service provider sometimes use that service's address as their registered office.
As well as having a registered office, you are legally required to display the company's name outside the registered office (and every other place of business). You are also required to file a return telling Companies House if you want to change your registered office.
From October 2008, the requirement to display a company's registered name at its registered office was extended to include display at an 'inspection place', which is defined as any location other than a company's registered office at which a company keeps available for inspection any company record, such as its statutory registers, required under the Companies Acts.
The signs at the registered office or inspection place must be displayed in a prominent position, so visitors can easily read them. Where a business location is shared by six or more companies, each company is only required to display its registered name for at least 15 continuous seconds at least once every three minutes, eg where it is using an electronic notice board.
A company must respond within five days to enquiries from any person who, in the course of business, requests in writing the address of the registered office or any other place where that person can inspect company records.
