Company registered at my address fraudulently

[HungryHippos]

It does seem like a major issue that a company can register itself in your address without sending a confirmation letter to the address with a URL confirmation, plus having the owner confirm their address in UK address.
Simple mail that enables a quick “no it was not me that requested a company at this address” URL would have helped speed up the process.

The way that Companies House has been doing this is by simply believing by default all applications, without any mandate to do anything else, they've not bothered to add a single validation into the registration process. This must create a lot of work for them as well, so not sure why they've felt this was fine all this time!

I think the idea is that it's cheap/quick/easy to setup a new company for anyone who wants to, whilst in theory this is a good thing, in practice this is something that has been abused by scammers to setup fake companies at random addresses.

Applications cost £12 but presumably stolen cards are used to pay for the applications.

I can see that my address is not alone in this, others have been hit by similar things on my street, one even had 5 companies registered there since the start of 2023.

Your idea for even the most basic "thing you have to receive to complete registration" would probably have cut out a lot of these bogus applications, though not all of them I'm sure. Hopefully this does improve with the new legislation.

In general it would be good for there to be more account controls in place as well for any account creation, example above being the case if your identity is being targeted, because nothing really stops people taking out services in your name if they have your actual details.

 

[Resident]

The way that Companies House has been doing this is by simply believing by default all applications, without any mandate to do anything else, they've not bothered to add a single validation into the registration process. This must create a lot of work for them as well, so not sure why they've felt this was fine all this time!

I think the idea is that it's cheap/quick/easy to setup a new company for anyone who wants to, whilst in theory this is a good thing, in practice this is something that has been abused by scammers to setup fake companies at random addresses.

Applications cost £12 but presumably stolen cards are used to pay for the applications.

I can see that my address is not alone in this, others have been hit by similar things on my street, one even had 5 companies registered there since the start of 2023.

Your idea for even the most basic "thing you have to receive to complete registration" would probably have cut out a lot of these bogus applications, though not all of them I'm sure. Hopefully this does improve with the new legislation.

In general it would be good for there to be more account controls in place as well for any account creation, example above being the case if your identity is being targeted, because nothing really stops people taking out services in your name if they have your actual details.

Although not a business, we got letters from the DWP and NHS in typical middle-eastern names about a year after we moved in

We found out that these letters were benefit and patient registrations.

The DWP were surprisingly helpful in getting the issue sorted and we got a confirmation that the names were no longer associated with our address. The NHS, despite being informed, still send the odd letter.

 

[Nasher]

Weirdly in the UK you don't have to prove you live at an address to set a company up there. Why they still haven't changed that who knows :/

Yet if you want to report it as fraudulent, you need to proove you live there...

 

[HungryHippos]

Weirdly in the UK you don't have to prove you live at an address to set a company up there. Why they still haven't changed that who knows :/

Apparently is and will be validated after April this year, but it's slow moving bureaucracy. They said they'd be checking ID for existing ones as well, but with a grace period, so a lot of these issues may get cleared up by default.

The current process to setup a fake company is very simple, but the process to remove it is very long winded and difficult by compare.

 

[Destination]

So the new law to stop this issue came into action at the end of October, yet OP is still having to deal with it as though there was no new law.

rather interesting, somewhat amazing if our current government has managed to be inept regarding something

 

[Mysterae_]

Apparently is and will be validated after April this year, but it's slow moving bureaucracy. They said they'd be checking ID for existing ones as well, but with a grace period, so a lot of these issues may get cleared up by default.

The current process to setup a fake company is very simple, but the process to remove it is very long winded and difficult by compare.

rather interesting, somewhat amazing if our current government has managed to be inept regarding something

I imagine there will be a number of PPE companies suddenly disappearing after April.

 

[mrk]

Sheesh, fine, I'll deregister my company from your address!