Registered as a director at companies house, but want private info removed

textbook

I just searched my name on google with the name of the town i live in and my details- name, address etc came up easily on Companies house.

I registered as a director to manage the block of flats I live in with three other people who live here.

I'm worried someone might find me- stalker or someone after me from the address. Can i get it permanently removed?

There was an application to remove myself for credits reference agencies but you need a police report. I'm more worried about anyone using google. But I guess removal from credit reference agencies would be a bonus. Wish I'd never signed up. What to do? Mostly it's my address I want removed but anything else is a bonus too.

kuratowski

I think you can. Take a look at this article:

https://www.icaew.com/library/subject-gateways/law/legal-alert/2018-06/new-law-directors-and-others-can-more-easily-make-home-addresses-at-companies-house-unavailable

00ec25

textbook wrote: »

Mostly it's my address I want removed but anything else is a bonus too.

by law the director of a company must provide a service address. That means an address at which companies house can serve notices on the director.

Your problem is that because your company is the right to manage company for the property it and you exist at, it presumably does not have any other address it can use?

Do you produce your own accounts? If not, the easy answer is your accountant will offer a registered office address service, but that will of course cost you to use it

alternatively there are a wide range of specialist companies that will offer an accommodation address acceptable to companies house in return for you paying them. they may / will be cheaper than your accountant's offering. just google them and compare

at the end of the day, if you want to be less visible, you have to:
- either pay for an alternative
- or resign from the company

Pennywise

Another aspect is that if you get your address removed from Co House now, for the future, the historical footprint could be there forever as many firms/websites harvest Co House information. So whilst your address may no longer show up on Co House, it may still appear in lots of other places. I can google my own name and address from 20 years ago attached to a long dissolved limited company where I used to work at. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. If you want anonymity, you need to use a different service address from the moment you become a director, not months/years later.

Rappa

00ec25 wrote: »

...

at the end of the day, if you want to be less visible, you have to:
- either pay for an alternative
- or resign from the company

Simply resigning from the company is unlikely to make the OP less visible.

Companies House keeps on public record details of all company officers, both active and resigned.

kuratowski

Pennywise makes a very good point. As the update I linked above states, you can pay to have the details of even historical directorships hidden from CH's public register, however you would then need to separately contact every other website - such as 192 dotcom - which has subsequently scraped your details and ask them to delete your details also.

Mistral001

I assume managing it as a partnership or other means which does not involve Companies House is out of the question?

textbook

00ec25 wrote: »

by law the director of a company must provide a service address. That means an address at which companies house can serve notices on the director.

Your problem is that because your company is the right to manage company for the property it and you exist at, it presumably does not have any other address it can use?

Do you produce your own accounts? If not, the easy answer is your accountant will offer a registered office address service, but that will of course cost you to use it

alternatively there are a wide range of specialist companies that will offer an accommodation address acceptable to companies house in return for you paying them. they may / will be cheaper than your accountant's offering. just google them and compare

at the end of the day, if you want to be less visible, you have to:
- either pay for an alternative
- or resign from the company

There about 4 people in the block of flats who have their address registered here at their home address but Foxes- the company who manages the flats also has an address (which is far away from where my flat is). I spoke to a guy from there and he said it was ok to use their address.

I filled out a CH01 form and put Foxes's address in Service address and another address section of the form then wrote a note to change my address to the Foxe's one. Hopefully they get the message! Not totally sure what the difference between service address and the other address section meant, anyhow, sending it today by post.

textbook

kuratowski wrote: »

Pennywise makes a very good point. As the update I linked above states, you can pay to have the details of even historical directorships hidden from CH's public register, however you would then need to separately contact every other website - such as 192 dotcom - which has subsequently scraped your details and ask them to delete your details also.

Well the address would only have been visible for a month hopefully if it gets changed so I'm hoping 192.com won't get hold of it in time!

Pennywise

textbook wrote: »

Well the address would only have been visible for a month hopefully if it gets changed so I'm hoping 192.com won't get hold of it in time!

The document showing your personal address will be on the co house website forever. By changing it now, it won't show as your "current" address anymore, but will still be in the historical documents section.

textbook

Pennywise wrote: »

The document showing your personal address will be on the co house website forever. By changing it now, it won't show as your "current" address anymore, but will still be in the historical documents section.

Yeah they changed to the new address. On the second click there are lots of PDF files and u can find the old address further down. This is much better and someone would have to click a read a bit to find my 'old' address then guess I might live there so might put someone off the scent if they're looking for me. Not great though!


I could change my name- My name's Christopher; and i could change it to Chris, although that might then highlight my real name and make things worse. I guess i will have to just put this down to experience.