Is Your Company Website In Breach Of UK Laws?

From 1st January 2007 companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their company websites and email footers or they will breach the Companies Act in the UK and risk a fine.

Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information must be in legible characters and should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on ‘business letters’ but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.

The information is likely to appear in the footer of every email sent from a company, to avoid having to decide whether each email amounts to a ‘business letter’ or not.

For websites, the specified information does not need to appear on every page. Many websites will already list the required information, perhaps on their ‘About us’ or ‘Legal information’ pages.

For e-commerce websites it is understood that the company registration number, place of registration and registered office address must be included.

According to new regulations, the following is the minimum information that must be on any company’s website.

1. The name, geographic address and email address of the service provider. The name of the organisation with which the customer is contracting must be given. This might differ from the trading name. Any such difference should be explained e.g. “XYZ.com is the trading name of XYZ Enterprises Limited.”
2. It is not sufficient to include a ‘contact us’ form without also providing an email address and geographic address somewhere easily accessible on the site. A PO Box is unlikely to suffice as a geographic address; but a registered office address would. If the business is a company, the registered office address must be included.
3. If a company, the company’s registration number should be given and, under the Companies Act, the place of registration should be stated (e.g. “XYZ Enterprises Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 1234567″)
4. If the business is a member of a trade or professional association, membership details, including any registration number, should be provided.
5. If the business has a VAT number, it should be stated even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions.
6. Prices on the website must be clear and unambiguous. Also, state whether prices are inclusive of tax and delivery costs.

If your website is out of date, now is the time to update it to comply with the new laws.
Contact us for advice or how we can help you.