Summary

  • The government accepts 14 of 15 recommendations, rejecting an exemption from the annual confirmation statement for small dormant companies with no changes.
  • It pauses a planned small-company profit-and-loss filing for April 2028 while keeping the yearly Companies House checkpoint, currently £50 online.

The exception with a pulse

A dormant company sounds like the easiest item on a regulator’s desk. No trading, no new statutory details, no plot twist. The Small Business Regulatory Taskforce proposed letting small dormant or non-trading companies skip the annual confirmation statement when nothing had changed. The government said no.

That was the one recommendation it rejected among 15. The taskforce worked across five broad areas; the government says it accepts the other 14. Its response, published on 23 October, sets out a recognisable bargain: reduce duplication, keep the register’s yearly check-in.

The check-in is not a fresh set of accounts. Companies House says every company, including dormant companies, must file at least one confirmation statement every 12 months. It confirms that the public record is accurate or identifies what needs changing. The current fee is £50 online or £110 on paper, paid with the first statement in the 12-month payment period. A company that has changed nothing still has to say so.

The government’s case is register integrity. It says annual confirmation helps catch inaccurate information and possible misuse. That is a choice about what the register is for: a directory that waits for companies to volunteer updates, or a record that periodically asks whether its entries still deserve to be there. The government chose the second, and left dormant firms holding the pen.

There is a useful contrast elsewhere in the same response. Government paused the planned requirement for small and micro entities to file profit-and-loss information with Companies House from April 2028. It wants to explore a streamlined route with HMRC before asking businesses to send the same information through two doors. The P&L requirement is paused, not abolished; the annual confirmation duty remains in place.

The distinction is sharper than the phrase “cut red tape” suggests. A second copy of financial information is a candidate for removal. A recurring assertion that the company record is still right is treated as infrastructure. The taskforce’s rejected proposal was small in paperwork terms, but it exposed the boundary of the reform: fewer duplicate submissions, yes; fewer moments when the register gets to ask, apparently not yet.

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