Registered Address Or Business Address – What’s The Difference?
Published by Mark Robinson on
Registering an address with Companies House is one of the final steps to take when you first set up a limited company. This address appears on the public register and must be a physical one in the UK.
But what if you work from home and don’t want your personal details to be made public? And what if your business has grown and you need to make a change? Here, we explain what you need to know about your company’s registered address and your business address, and why they might be different.
Registered Address
For most large companies, the address registered with Companies House is their headquarters. It must be in the UK and in the same country as the company is registered, so a Scottish company must have an address in Scotland and an English company must have an address in England.
For sole traders, startups and small businesses, the same rules apply, but the choice may be less obvious.
Once an address is registered it remains on the public register for the lifetime of the company and for 20 years after it has been dissolved, so those starting a business from home are often reluctant to make this information public. Fortunately, your company’s registered address doesn’t have to be the place you work from.
That’s where services like our mailbox packages come in. Whether you are a tenant or not, you can use a registered address service to set up your company and receive mail from HMRC and Companies House.
Some companies will use the service to register in the UK before they are ready to open an office here, or if they want to keep trading after moving abroad. But for many of our customers, it provides the flexibility they need when their business grows, as they do not need to make frequent changes.
Business Address
A business address is the information you provide to customers, whether on your website, on stationery or in correspondence. This is not necessarily the same as the address registered with Companies House, but is how you choose to be contacted.
Those who provide their home as their registered address will often use a business address service to make a professional impression, and to ensure they never miss important deliveries.
Our central Hitchin location, for example, looks great to potential customers, and we accept all parcels – including recorded and signed for deliveries – during business hours. All our mailbox services can be upgraded to include scan-to-email, which means there’s no need to wait for urgent mail to be forwarded.
So whether you are in the process of setting up your company, planning to change your registered address or looking for more information about creating a new business address, click here to get in touch with the team.