A missing data issue related to the process of restoring companies by court order?
00352622 - https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00352622
In API, Beta, WebCHeck:
Registered office address: Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx, XXXXXXXX
No SIC / people either (“To be provided”).
This was incorporated a long time ago! A court order was made requesting this be restored (in 2015) – is CH waiting for the data here?
Thanks for taking the time to report this. I have raised it as an issue and will let you know when it has been resolved.
I have spoken to someone in the restoration department and they are preparing an explanation.
Here is the information I have received:-
Thanks for your comment concerning the company’s registered office address. You have enquired whether Companies House is still waiting for data to update the address. That is not the case as we do not hold any information concerning the company’s registered office. Let me explain this in a little more detail.
The company was dissolved in 1977, a date prior to computerised records being held by Companies House. In addition, when we did digitise our records, we took a decision not to include the data for companies which had been dissolved for a number of years. Thirdly, any paper documents we held for the company were destroyed a number of years ago, in line with our usual policy for such matters. Therefore, in this instance, we do not have any data concerning the company’s registered office address.
This is a situation that occurs very rarely and comes about as the result of a particular set of circumstances. The circumstances are where a company was dissolved a large number of years ago and has subsequently been restored by a third party (if it was the company undertaking the restoration we would request updated information concerning the registered office). However, in this instance, the company was restored by a third party to undertake litigation action.
As the company must be returned to the live register following the making of such a restoration order; we do so, but without certain statutory information (such as the registered office address or information about the company officers).
I hope this answers your enquiry…
Two thoughts on this: first, if there is no known address, returning an empty string value in JSON would be better than returning an unpredictable sequence of "XXXX"s.
Second, it is a great shame that the UK national records don’t keep forever images of paper documents submitted. When I say “images” I am thinking of the fact that, in my home of Hong Kong, the Companies Registry used to image and store all submissions on (analogue) microfiche. When the time came to go digital, they digitised all of those microfiches. Some of the documents in those images date back to the 1920s, soon after company registration became compulsory in HK (which was in 1911). The records even survived over 3 years of Japanese occupation during World War II. It is true that the HK registry still has a paywall, which I have been urging them to tear down, and I applaud the UK for having done that. But at least the records exist.
Was there ever a set of UK Companies Registry microfiches, and if so, does a set still exist that might contain images that could be digitised?
I have had a call from the restoration department and during their investigation they have managed to recover some documentation that contains the former RO of the company.
They will be updating our records in the next few days.
Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Just to let you know that the ROA has now been updated on CHS.
Thank you for the investigation. It’s great to get responses to queries about this service and you’ve provided a lot of detail here for an issue which is technically outwith the API itself.
I appreciate lots of the queries around data are over “old” or “exceptional” records / cases. I’m less interested in “completeness” than “comprehension” and “consistency”. To know what Companies House does (and doesn’t do) and to ensure that I can provide consistency to our users.
I appreciate that the data is subject to the requirements of legal procedure and that this a “look up” service is a secondary requirement and that there will be certain operational constraints e.g. what data is stored, from when. I have followed up on the subject of data “silently disappearing” in another post.
Thanks again.