Call for comments by Monday 11 January

Many of you are aware that more provisions of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (SBEEA) will come into force on 6 April this year. Section 81 and Schedule 3 introduce the PSC Register.

A “person with significant control” (PSC) is an individual who meets the following criteria:

• Direct or indirect ownership of more than 25% of a company’s shares
• Direct or indirect right to appoint or remove a majority of the board of company directors
• Exercises or has the right to exercise significant influence or control over a company
• Exercises or has the right to exercise significant influence or control over activities of a trust or firm which itself meets one or more of the above four conditions (in respect of a company)

As expected, there is draft statutory guidance for companies but it’s quite lengthy! So there have been many hands on deck to help companies get their heads around the legislation. There has been a Working Group set up to oversee the guidance and recently the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have been working together. The ICSA has published guidance documents that BIS will issue with the aim to assist companies with complying with this new requirement.

We are still waiting on the following guidance from:

• Companies House on how to complete filings in relation to information on PSCs; and
• BIS for the actual PSCs themselves

The guidance we have at the moment was published in December 2015:

• Statutory guidance for companies on understanding the meaning of ‘significant influence or control’
• Statutory guidance for LLP’s on understanding the meaning of ‘significant influence or control’
• Summary (non-statutory) guidance for companies on the PSC requirements
• Guidance for companies on the PSC requirements

The guidance for LLP’s is very similar to the guidance for companies save for the changes to match structural differences between companies and LLP’s.

Before BIS issues the guidance produced by ICSA there is an opportunity for comments to be made and the deadline for these is 11 January. Your comments can be submitted to [email protected].

For more information on how to get a head start preparing your business for the PSC Register regulations coming in April, contact us.