Last year, I wrote about the number of foreign owned companies (overseas entities) who own property in Cornwall, see foreign owned properties.
In that article, I said that 21 of those overseas entities were not registered at Companies House, which they are required to do. This means that the actual ownership of those companies remains hidden from public view. Companies House should be taking enforcement action against those organisations and their agents. I suspected that, given that there were 21 examples of law breaking in Cornwall alone, pro rata one would have expected the figure for those in breach across the whole country (in this case England and Wales) to be of the order of 2,000 or more.
An FOI request that I made to Companies House has now revealed the actual figures. They are:
Number of entities initially identified as in breach of the requirement to register: 3,106.
Number of warning notices sent to entities about the breaches: 4,778 (this suggests that some entities had to be sent more than one warning notice).
Number of entities that have “rectified their situation”: 830 (meaning that nearly three quarters have still not done what they should have done.
Number of penalties issued: 444 (only 14% of those in breach).
In other words, the overwhelming majority of overseas entities who have breached the law have, to date, suffered no consequence as a result of the breach.
See Companies House FOI response.