WRITTEN ON June 10th, 2009 BY David Moss AND STORED IN Transformational Government

Anyone can submit a Form 287 to Companies House. On that form, anyone can specify any registered address for any company. I now know that from first hand experience. Using Forms 288 a, b and c, I believe that anyone can appoint anyone as a director of any company, or retire them or change their personal details such as date of birth.

Companies House are not being daft. They have to accept all documents sent in “good faith”.

There are implications for fraud and misrepresentation. And also for mindless vandalism – it’s a bit irritating if you don’t receive the reminder in Wimbledon to file your annual return because Companies House have sent it in “good faith” to an address in Hull.

It sounds like a relic from some age of innocence. Delightful. But dangerous.

Companies House have three solutions which I commend to you:

• File your returns online. That way, the vandal will need to know your logon ID and password and the company’s authentication code before he or she can submit their annoying forms.

• Sign up to their monitoring service, which alerts you whenever any document is submitted in respect of the company, total cost 50p p.a.

• Sign up to PROOF, so that change of address and directors details and annual returns can only be submitted online, not by post. That’s the one that closes the loop or squares the circle.

The web can be positively transformational.