Quick summary
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act removed the requirement for companies to keep their own local registers of directors, directors' residential addresses, secretaries and people with significant control, because Companies House holds that information centrally. The register of members was not removed. For a share of freehold company it is the register that proves who owns the building, and it is the one nobody else is keeping for you.
Something quietly reassuring happened to company admin recently: a stack of registers that most small companies kept badly, or not at all, stopped being required. Register of directors, gone. Register of secretaries, gone. Register of PSCs, gone. Companies House already had all of it.
Then people read the headline, concluded that registers were over, and stopped keeping the one that actually mattered.
Why the register of members is the odd one out
The others were duplicates. Companies House holds your directors and your people with significant control, so a second copy in a folder in someone's spare room added nothing.
The register of members is different, because Companies House does not hold it in a usable form. The confirmation statement reports shareholder information periodically, but the live, authoritative record of who owns the shares in your freehold company is the register your company keeps. There is no central version to fall back on.
For a building, that register is the answer to "who owns the freehold". It is what a buyer's solicitor relies on, what a lender may ask about, and what settles an argument about who is entitled to vote.
We wrote about the change itself in your building no longer has to keep a register of directors.
What has to be in it
For a typical share of freehold company, each entry needs:
- The member's full name
- Their address
- The date they were entered in the register as a member
- The date they ceased to be a member, where that applies
- The number and class of shares held
Under the ECCTA reforms companies are also expected to hold a full name and address for every member rather than the partial records some older registers carry, so if yours has initials and a flat number, that is worth tidying.
The failure mode, and it is always the same
Nobody loses the register in a dramatic way. It decays.
A flat sells and the transfer is recorded on a scrap of paper. A director keeps it all in a spreadsheet, then moves out and takes the laptop. Two owners later, the register lists people who have not lived in the building for a decade, and everyone assumes someone else has the real version.
The moment it surfaces is always a sale, and always at the worst point in the chain. Our notes on what a buyer's solicitor asks for and handing the company over to the next board both come back to the same root cause.
A ten-minute sanity check
- Can you produce the register today, without asking anyone?
- Does the number of members match the number of flats that hold a share?
- Is every name a person who currently owns their flat?
- Does the total number of shares match what the company has actually issued?
- Does it agree with what you last told Companies House on your confirmation statement?
If any answer is no, that is the job for this month. It will take an evening now and a solicitor's fee later.
Frequently asked questions
Do we still have to keep a register of members after the ECCTA changes?
Yes. ECCTA removed the requirement to keep local registers of directors, directors' residential addresses, secretaries and PSCs, because Companies House holds those centrally. The register of members remained a company obligation.
Where should the register of members be kept?
At the registered office or an alternative inspection location notified to Companies House. In practice that means somewhere every director can reach it, not one person's private files. See our note on moving the registered office if the current address is a previous owner's flat.
What if our register has gaps going back years?
Reconstruct what you can from stock transfer forms, completion statements, past confirmation statements and Land Registry records, then have the board formally adopt the corrected register and minute what was done and why. An honest, documented reconstruction is far better than leaving it wrong.