The Companies (Receipt of Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2013

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations concern the circumstances under which companies may send to members in place of the company's full accounts and reports a copy of the company's strategic report with supplementary material in accordance with section 426 of the Companies Act 2006 (c.46) (“the Act”).

Section 426 (as originally enacted) provided that a company could prepare and send a summary financial statement to persons who were entitled to receive full copies of the company's accounts and reports. That section was amended by regulation 10 of the Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors' Report) Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013/XXX) (“the 2013 Regulations”) to provide that instead of an option to provide a summary financial statement the company could provide a copy of its strategic report with supplementary material. The requirement for a company to prepare a strategic report is set out in section 414A of Part 15 of the Act, and supplementary material is described in section 426A of the Act, both as inserted into the Act by the 2013 Regulations.

Regulation 2 revokes the Companies (Summary Financial Statement) Regulations 2008 (S.I., 2008/374) with a saving for notifications made under regulation 5(2) and the effect of a failure to respond to an opportunity to elect to receive copies of the full accounts and reports under regulation 5(3) of those regulations.

Regulations 4 to 8 provide for the conditions under which a company may provide a copy of the strategic report with supplementary material and the procedures by which it can be ascertained whether a person wishes to receive full accounts and reports. These regulations are in substantially the same form as regulations 4 to 8 of S.I. 2008/374.

An impact assessment of the effect that the 2013 Regulations will have on the costs to business is available from Business Environment Directorate of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET or at www.gov.uk/bis and is published with the Explanatory Memorandum alongside that instrument on www.legislation.gov.uk. No separate impact assessment has been prepared for this instrument.