Companies House admit delays

According to accountants, Blick Rothenburg, businesses are being pursued by debt recovery agents for late filing penalties as Companies House take up to six months to respond to appeals.

With so many penalty appeals at Companies House during the pandemic, the outcome for businesses is prolonged delay and uncertainty.

Many of these appeals are from businesses that missed the late filing deadline for their financial statement because of health issues or being trapped overseas during the pandemic.

Blick Rothenberg claims some businesses are waiting as long as six months for the registrar of companies to respond and when they do get a response, appeals have been “generically rejected without regard to the difficulties faced by the business”.

“When this is challenged, it is passed to another department for further review adding to the prolonged delay and uncertainty,” said Marc Levy, a partner at Blick Rothenberg. 

Levy added that some penalties have been passed on by Companies House to debt collection agents before the appeal has concluded. 



“This is the last thing that such business owners need, when they are under financial strain, still waiting to hear the outcome from Companies House and just fighting to survive."

They added: “All appeals are individually considered and, if the appeal is unsuccessful, the appellant has the option to ask our Senior Casework Unit to review the decision and following that ask for an independent adjudicator to review the case.” 

In the meantime, the Companies House spokesperson encouraged companies to lodge appeals in good time.

“Once we’ve received an appeal, recovery action is put on hold until the matter is dealt with. Occasionally, we do receive appeals after recovery action has started and, as soon as we are aware an appeal has been made, we will suspend recovery action until the outcome of the appeal is known.”