Registered offices

Tenants have registered my rental property address at companies house as private limited company “offices”?this has been done behind my back with no permissions sought, they had a AST which has expired, they were issued section 21 - 9 months ago ignored it because of Covid & have since registered the this business with HMRC they are not UK citizens. Any legal advice appreciated? Thanks

If they are now "offices "then can they be easier to evict?

Are they still living there?
You may need specialist legal and accounting advice
There may be legal implications from running a business from the home as they are governed by different statutes
Businesses are not governed by the Consumer act either
It could be a bit of a mess
We had a similar problem but a random third party had used our address to register a business
It took about six months for us to resolve the issue and I had a specialist fill in the forms just in case we had to go to court

Yes they are surely this is a criminal offence to set up a ltd company with company offices on a government
Data base without permissions. Thanks for replying.

Yes they have registered as company offices, which they’ve changed the use of building? Thanks for your reply

It is a breach of contract
Anyone can set up a company and use any address. That is not illegal.

The problem is how the law changes because it is a business but they signed as a domestic dwelling
Speak to a solicitor in the morning

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They may have stitched themselves up if it is easier to evict from “offices” than a home, after all they changed it to an “office”

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The registered office is just the correspondence address listed at Companies House. Doesn’t actually make it an office. You can use any address in the relevant country (apart from a PO Box) as a registered office.

It’s very common for the registered office to be the residential address of one of the directors and it doesn’t change the use of the home from being a normal residence.

And they won’t have registered the company with HMRC themselves. Companies House passes the details of be companies to HMRC so the registration (and change of address if you change the registered office) is automatic.

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got it Thats a shame

Does that apply to rented properties too? The contract states residential use only. Shouldn’t they have asked permission?

Thanks for your reply

That would be more of a legal question, but, for insurance purposes, if it is just clerical work and you don’t have business visitors to the house the insurance company would not normally count working from home as business use.

Hi Cath I’ve spoken to companies House uk & a tenant has to seek permission to register a uk business & they are in the process of updating the ID required to change an address which at present a company director can do without any proof of address you can just make one up! Unbelievable I know. Thank you for your support.

As Cath2 suggests, this is not really a problem for you the landlord and doesn’t mean they’re running a business from the property.

Yes but they still require permission & as the owner you can have the adr removed from the register within 28 days. Thanks for the reply.

Even more unbelievable is that, unless they have registered for PROOF (whereby you can only file electronically with an authentication code), anyone could send in a paper change of address form for the company, pretending to be the director, and change the address and hijack the company.
Obviously that would be fraud though!

I suspect that your tenant would be able to provide sufficient proof of address to use your property though, if needed, because it is their home. They are likely to have driving licences, bills etc proving they live there. I don’t think they need your permission as the legal owner under the law generally. The fact that your contract might forbid it will mean nothing to Companies House without a court order saying that they cannot use that address because that is a contractual rather than a general legal issue.

Yes, but why do you want to? Have you spoken to them about what they’re doing?

We had letters from companies house threatening to seize the property that an unknown third party used to generate a company when the party did not file etc etc
Fortunately we knew somebody who dealt with the forms
The third party did not appeal ( how could they as they never got the correspondence)
If they appealed we were told we would have to go to court to prove that they never lived there!!

If it were me I would sort it out

Yes I understand, Companies House were really informative & issued 2 forms to get my property removed from registration as straight away they asked if tenants requested permission? No & no we’re refusing permission based on wear & tear, complaints from neighbours, insurance, mortgage, contracts. They asked me for more ID than they do ask for registering a company, shocking! They accept changes via virtual office which is a subscription service. Although they did say there were going to be some changes but didn’t say it was a reflective of data they currently accept. Many thanks Cath.

The didn’t have permission, they didn’t enquire if contracts allow them, theyve been issued section 21, theyve ignored the contract, they are in arrears, they are uncooperative and they upset the neighbours, shall I carry on…I don’t care what they’ve doing. Thanks for your reply.