[buro9]

> The UK address. 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY. According to a BBC report, this is the address used by a company which sells its use as a registered office address. Because there does not seem to be an obligation to check that users of the service are legitimate companies, criminals are attracted to it. According to the BBC, the address is in common use among fake companies operating "boiler room" fake share scams.

That is the old address for Companies Made Simple: http://www.companiesmadesimple.com/

They handle all kinds of services for tens of thousands of companies in the UK, from registration, to registered address and mail forwarding.

I know this, because I used them for my startup to handle the registered address. This is because official mail has to go somewhere and the address is a matter of public record. We were in a co-working space at the time and knew that we would move on when the time came, it's an annoyance to go around updating the registered address and unprofessional to have a co-working space as one.

That Companies Made Simple is used by bad actors isn't going to be a surprise, bad actors use nearly all service providers.

They are the largest provider of registered address services in the UK, it's not a surprise that the address is in "common use". That ignores the fact that the number of legitimate businesses that use the address vastly outnumber the illegitimate.

I dislike Companies Made Simple having used them (they nearly shredded our investors SEIS certs because they didn't regard them as "official government communication"), but it's probably defamation to imply that companies using the address are not legitimate just because some small sample of them are not.

[wongarsu]

To be fair, they never implied that a sizable portion of businesses using that address are illegitimate (though some people will read it that way). If I say "Twitter is in common use among ISIS members" that doesn't mean that most twitter users are ISIS members.

[buro9]

That's true, they just cited someone else who were less careful: http://interfraud.org/ni_british_connection.htm

But even the source is incorrect. For registered address services you do have to verify company details.

It is only for generic mail forwarding services that you do not have to verify company details.

The difference being that the former is required to help disambiguate mail address to company officials from official government offices, and to ensure successful routing of mail to the correct person (failure to deliver mail from HMRC can result in substantial fines which would be a liability for Companies Made Simple).

The latter is no different from any mail box or mail forwarding service.

It seems that the anti-fraud organisation cited hasn't actually used the service and is unaware of the difference in proof required by them.

[jsingleton]

Would you recommend another formation agent instead?

[buro9]

For company formation, do it yourself.

It's a trivially small fee and can be done online with Companies House in a very short amount of time and they will auto-notify HMRC in the same go.

For mail forwarding and registered office address... I honestly now think you should only consider one of three options:

1) Your work address if it is a sole-use mailbox and you know you will be there for more than a year.

2) Your accountants address (with their consent).

3) Your home address.

I would not now use a third party for the registered address, the risks are too high. There is no junk or spam mail sent to this address, it really is just actionable and important government communication from Companies House, HMRC, etc.

[jsingleton]

I'd be hesitant to use a home address as it goes on public record. If you rent then it can be against the terms of the tenancy contract to register a business at the address. Also you might move and someone else could get your post and potentially do bad things. Are these reasonable concerns?

[buro9]

If you're in short-term rental accommodation (1 year or less) or if you share a mailbox... then yes, these are concerns.

If you fail to respond to HMRC mail, you can be fined. i.e. missing reminders about a tax return, or PAYE info.

Both Companies House and HMRC will send authorisation codes to the registered address, and you can use these to change shareholdings, dissolve a company, make declarations that are untrue, etc.

You definitely need to trust the registered address a lot, and that trust needs to be stable.

[mbesto]

I used Stanley Davis - stanleydavis.co.uk

I was planning to open a Barclays bank account anyway, so the minimal processing fee (£30) was basically null when Barclays gave me £40 to open their account. I was referred to them by a well known city-based accounting firm.