Handing the Company Over to the Next Board

There is a moment in most self-managed buildings when the person who has quietly held everything together announces they are selling. And the reaction, in every building, is the same slightly panicked silence, followed by somebody saying "it can't be that hard, can it?"

It is not hard. It is just entirely undocumented.

The three handovers

The legal one. File a TM01 for the director stepping down, and an AP01 for anyone taking their place. Update the register of members if a share is moving with the flat sale. This is the part everyone remembers, and we set out the mechanics in keeping a register of directors up to date.

The access one. Companies House login and authentication code, the bank, the insurance broker, the email address the company actually uses, the document store, the utilities and contractor accounts. This is the part everyone forgets, and the one that causes the damage.

The knowledge one. Which contractor is reliable. Why the flat roof was done in 2019 and what the guarantee says. That the freeholder next door has a right of way over the bins. None of this is written anywhere, and it walks out of the building with you.

A handover list that actually works

1. Write down the annual cycle. When the confirmation statement is due, when the insurance renews, when accounts are filed, when the service charge demand goes out. Four dates, one page.
2. Move the company off your personal email. If the company's correspondence arrives at yourname@gmail, the company does not really have an email address. Set up something that can be handed on.
3. Share Companies House access properly rather than passing round a password. Our guide on giving other directors access to your filings covers how.
4. Check the registered office. If it is your flat and you are moving, it has to change. See moving the registered office.
5. Put the documents somewhere shared before you go, not after. Where do your building's documents live is the fuller version of this.
6. File the TM01 and any AP01 and check they have appeared on the public record.
7. Write the awkward page. The disputes, the neighbour who does not pay, the thing about the drains. Honestly and without editorialising. It is the most valuable document you will produce.

The bit that goes wrong

Almost always: the company keeps functioning for about eight months, then misses a deadline nobody knew existed. A confirmation statement passes unnoticed, then a reminder goes to an inbox no one reads, then a letter arrives at an address that is now someone else's flat.

By the time it surfaces the company has a red mark on its public record, and in the worst cases a first Gazette notice. We wrote about how that sequence actually unfolds in what happens if you miss the deadline and how to read the warning letters in that letter from Companies House.

If the building is running on one or two people, the risk is meaningfully higher, and the numbers back that up: see running your building's company with just one or two of you.