Registered Business Address/mail forwarding services?

[Seaside Manc]

So I am after a Registered Buisness address and mail forwarding provider for my small business. Having carried out a forum search, I can see that this hasn’t been mentioned in a few yrs, so I thought I would ask for current experiences please? Who do you use and would you recommend them?


There are a few different service providers I have found but have no idea if they are any good or not:

FOSVA (London based)
CityAddress.co.uk (Manchester and London)
Scanmypost.co.uk
Ukpostbox.com
Companiesmadesimple.com


Any others that I’ve missed out?

Any information or experiences you’ve had would be greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance ??


Edited to add another provider I just found...

Edited by Seaside Manc on Monday 30th September 18:27

[LongCompton]

Used UKPostbox for a while now.

Can't fault the service - they are helpful, fairly quick in scanning mail in and reasonably price. They've just changed their pricing recently and it's better.

10/10 from me.

[Seaside Manc]

Thank you for sharing your experience, I too have read some positive reviews on their site, have to admit I’m just a bit paranoid at the idea of them opening my mail and seeing sensitive information. Does that not concern you? Or anyone else?

[Toaster Pilot]

Companies Made Simple are great but the mail forwarding service (for any mail other than official mail) is creeping up in price.

[Seaside Manc]

Thanks for your contribution, The prices vary a lot, I’m happy to pay a fair amount for a good service. The company doesn’t get a large volume of mail, it’s mostly emil etc, but I want any official letters to be forwarded promptly, Hence I don’t think it’s going to cost a great deal. Need to get this sorted....


Cheers

[Toaster Pilot]

Do you actually get any non-official mail from people/customers or is it just banks etc?

One of my companies is set up on the official mail / registered office / directors service address service which is much cheaper and I just use my home address as the trading address for the bank account so statements go there.

Home address is still kept off the record but it’s far cheaper than having everything forwarded.

(I’m assuming privacy is your drive for this, it was for me. Be aware you can’t use one of these services as a trading address for VAT)

[Lemming Train]

Toaster Pilot said:

Be aware you can’t use one of these services as a trading address for VAT)

Why is that then? When I was VAT registered it was to my registered office address in London, which was a servicing/forwarding company. Never had any issues.

[Toaster Pilot]

Lemming Train said:

Why is that then? When I was VAT registered it was to my registered office address in London, which was a servicing/forwarding company. Never had any issues.

It should be the principal place of business - HMRC are very clear on that and IIRC actually specifically say that shouldn’t be a PO Box or forwarding address.

[Lemming Train]

Toaster Pilot said:

Lemming Train said:

Why is that then? When I was VAT registered it was to my registered office address in London, which was a servicing/forwarding company. Never had any issues.

It should be the principal place of business - HMRC are very clear on that and IIRC actually specifically say that shouldn’t be a PO Box or forwarding address.

Interesting. Wasn't aware of that. The company formation place I used offered a registered office address service for a nominal fee which I took as I didn't want to have my home address attached to the business, so the ROA was actually just a mailbox/forwarding service in London. Used the same address for the VAT no problems!

[Seaside Manc]

Toaster Pilot said:

Do you actually get any non-official mail from people/customers or is it just banks etc?

One of my companies is set up on the official mail / registered office / directors service address service which is much cheaper and I just use my home address as the trading address for the bank account so statements go there.

Home address is still kept off the record but it’s far cheaper than having everything forwarded.

(I’m assuming privacy is your drive for this, it was for me. Be aware you can’t use one of these services as a trading address for VAT)

Thanks for your contribution,

You do inevitably get some non official (gov/tax/companies house) mail, from other companies fishing for business or from lenders or indeed from certain clients.

Yes and No, I spend a proportion of my time outside of the country and I have missed deadlines this year and have ended up having to pay a fine because I didn't get relevant paperwork through on time. So it is not just the privacy thing, such a service will hopefully prevent this issue from occurring again.

Edited by Seaside Manc on Saturday 5th October 16:09

[Seaside Manc]

Lemming Train said:

Interesting. Wasn't aware of that. The company formation place I used offered a registered office address service for a nominal fee which I took as I didn't want to have my home address attached to the business, so the ROA was actually just a mailbox/forwarding service in London. Used the same address for the VAT no problems!

Thanks for your contribution, can I ask which service provider you used? was it any of the above?

Thank you

[Lemming Train]

It was Company Wizard. However I don't recommend them for mail forwarding as I had a number of issues.

[Pot Bellied Fool]

I use Liscard Business Centre (www.liscardbusinesscentre.com) as my virtual office, the team there also do my telephone answering which is great as they aren't script driven robots but real people you can give freeform instructions to.

They deal with post too - I can either pop in & get it or they'll forward it on. Lots of people have them as their Registered Office and they have clients all over the UK so not limited geographically.

A smaller indie than some of those mentioned but do a great job for me, happy to recommend.

[lizardbrain]

I'm reviewing my ltd company mail forwarding virtual office contract, and it's unclear if I actually need mail forwarding.

My sole motivation is privacy for companies house search.

Pretty much everything has gone digital now. As far as I know it' just hmrc letters that I need.

So my question is can I just change correspondence address in hmrc, and leave the companies house as is, without missing anything too important?

Am I forgetting obvious important mail?