Companies House has introduced a free "Follow" service, giving any person (whether involved with a company or not) the ability to follow a company and receive instant email notifications when any changes are made to that company's filing history. For those of us familiar with Facebook, etc., this concept is much the same.
The email alert itself is sent as soon as the company filing is accepted by Companies House and contains information about what has been filed along with a link to the company's filing history, where a copy of the relevant document will be available to download free of charge. Users of this service will also receive an email alert when a document is removed from the filing history.
Companies House suggests that the Follow service could be of particular use to persons wishing to monitor their own company to ensure no fraudulent filings are made. For example, company directors or auditors may find this service a convenient way of keeping track of changes in company activity.
It is worth noting that this feature is not new and continues to exist as the "Monitor Service" on the old Companies House Direct platform. According to Companies House, subscribers to the Monitor Service will continue to receive email notifications as normal for the foreseeable future. However, subscribers may wish to gradually migrate to the Follow service on the new Companies House Beta platform as it is not clear whether alerts under the old Monitor Service will continue to function as normal when Companies House Direct is eventually phased out.
To access the Follow service:
- Search for the company you wish to follow here.
- Select the company from the search results page.
- On the company overview page, click on "Follow this company".
- Register/sign in as prompted.
- If you wish to see all of the companies you follow, click "Companies you follow".
- To stop email alerts for a particular company, simply click "Unfollow".
The UK Government press release regarding the Follow service can be found here.
