A new company restoration process came into effect October 2009 with the new companies act and this is so much easier and cheaper to restore a company that has been recently dissolved ie; because of a late annual return. The process now involves the following:
Download the form RT01 from companies house
- Send off with their admin fee of £100
- Complete the annual return with a paper filing fee of £30
- Write to HM Treasury Solicitors for a Waiver letter (Companies house will tell you who to contact for the specific business) for a fee of £70
Having been through this process myself I can say that this has been handled pretty well so far, with turnarounds much better than it would have been previously.
A former director that I have been speaking with has had his annual return filed late now on two occasions and each time he says it was the fault of his accountant who has reimbursed his fees of £2000 each time along with bank charges and other associated disbursements.
Over a period of two years he has reimbursed fees of £4000 and the client and his customers has suffered operational disruption that comes from bank accounts being frozen.
Nice to see some changes being made that help companies (and presumably accountants) a lot more than prior to Oct 2009.
A cost of £200 in comparison with £2000 is a big difference.
I wonder now what other implications there will be with companies deliberately being dissolved “temporarily” with a view to encouraging creditors to write their debts off only to then start trading as the restored company a month or so later.
The point of this article though was just to highlight this option for people to consider where the company had been recently dissolved accidentally as from talking to a few people recently there still seems to be the view that Court Orders, lots of money and time are required when this isn’t necessary.
Final tip – Remember that the overdue annual return needs to be filed in the old 363a and not the new version as it needs to be made up to the overdue made up date!
I hope this article helps one or two people out there. Views welcome.
