Just over a year ago, I presented a podcast feature called “E for Evidence”. It was all about the increasing legal status of electronic communications – illustrated by the growing number of notices which appear on emails and websites.
A couple of months later, I was talking about the imminent arrival of the Companies Act 2006 – “the biggest shake-up in company law for more than twenty years!” That piece included a look at the catchily titled “Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations” 2006, which gave the EU “First Company Law Amendment Directive” force in the UK from 1st January 2007. As so often happens in law, an attempt at clarification has led to a lot of confusion. Many of the businesses I talk to are still not sure whether the new Regulations affect them and if so, what information they need to be adding to their emails and websites – so here goes with a summary:
- The Regulations affect you if your business is a private limited company, a public limited company or limited liability partnership.
You are not affected if you are a Sole trader or Ordinary partnership.
- The information must appear on:
business lettersorder forms andwebsites. The requirements relating to business letters have been with us for years. The 2006 Regulations (which also include order forms), acknowledge how much business is now conducted over the web, by stating specifically that the law applies to documents in hard and electronic copy and to websites. Technically, the required information only needs to appear on an email which is a “business letter”. In practice, though, it will be much easier to add it to every outgoing email, including messages forwarded and replied to.
- The minimum information to be included:
Business name as registeredRegistration numberPlace of registration – eg England and WalesTrading name (if different) – making it clear that it is a trading namegeographical address – often the registered officeVAT number – if VAT registered.
- The current penalty for not complying is £1000.00.
I hope that helps. I was going to head this “E for Excessive?” and look at the whole business of email notices etc, how many are required by law and how many actually have any value – but that’s another post, for another day!
What are your feelings on that subject? Do you know what all the paragraphs which appear automatically at the bottom of every email mean? Do you ever read them on other people’s messages? Do you treat emails as seriously as you would a traditional letter? – do you, in fact, ever write traditional letters any more? If you have an answer to any of those questions – or another question to pose – leave a comment. You can do the same if you have an idea for a future post.
I’m always open to ideas.
Sherie Griffiths
