Guidance: Companies House fees

We’ll publish any changes to our fees or any new fees in this guidance.

These registration fees do not apply to documents delivered under the Companies Act 1985 or the Companies (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. Any document delivered under these acts will be free of charge.

All statutory fees on this list have been confirmed by parliament and are set by the following statutory fees regulations:

The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Companies, Overseas Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1907) as amended by The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/621) The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (European Economic Interest Grouping and European Public Limited-Liability Company) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1908)as amended by The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/621) The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Limited Partnerships and Newspaper Proprietors) Regulations 2009 (SI 2009/2392) as amended byThe Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Limited Partnerships) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/319) and The Registrar of Companies (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/621)

Not all fees are set by the above regulations. Some fees are administratively set by a Fees determination (December 2018) (PDF, 383KB, 28 pages) under section 1063(5) of the Companies Act 2006.

This includes fees for:

new products products that are in decline products that have a small customer base Cost recovery principles

As a Trading Fund, Companies House must operate on the basis of cost recovery. We have a statutory duty to break even over time and to achieve an average annual return (surplus) of 3.5%.

Our fees are linked to the forecast cost of providing each service and the way customers access these services. This is required by European Law and HM Treasury guidance.

We consider a number of things are when we set our fees.

Guidance on Managing Public Money means we must set our fees to recover the full cost for each separate service - allowing for a cost of capital of 3.5%. This prohibits cross-subsidy between different services.

The EC First Company Law Directive means copies of company records must be made available at the administrative cost of producing them.

The EC Capital Taxes Directive allows company registration costs to be met from fees, but prohibits charges that are effectively taxes. This means that prices cannot be set above costs for the relevant services.

Case law provides further guidance on the costs that can and cannot be taken into account for setting fees. For example:

Fantask A/S e.a. v Industriministeriet Erhvervministeriet Ponente Carni SpA and Cispandana Costruzioni SpA v Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato

The Competition Act 1998 prohibits the abuse of a dominant position in a market.

Local copy of Fees_Determination_December_2018.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/companies-house-fees

seen at 18:34, 17 June in Publications on GOV.UK.
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