Government Acts to Reduce Company Formation Bottleneck

The use of certain names for companies etc. has been restricted for a very long time – the restrictions on ‘sensitive’ names being intended to reduce the likelihood that a person is misled into thinking that they are dealing with an organisation that has particular legal status or a particular sphere of operation. Applications containing sensitive names need to be approved by Companies House before the company can be formed, although more than two thirds are eventually approved.



There are currently more than 150 words and expressions on the ‘sensitive’ list. Applications to register companies with sensitive names are currently running at more than 4,000 per month. In a bid to ease the burden on Companies House, measures are being introduced to reduce the number of sensitive names. Following consultation, the list is to be cut by a third, with the changes due to come into force this year.



Among the names that will be removed from the list of sensitive names are ‘National’, ‘United Kingdom’, ‘Register’ and ‘Authority’. Among those retained as sensitive are ‘British’, ‘Association’, ‘Co-Operative’, ‘Fund’, ‘Registrar’, ‘Society’ and ‘Sheffield’.