As part of the UK government’s international commitment to improving transparency over who actually owns and controls UK companies, from 24 July 2017 this requirement has extended to eligible Scottish partnerships under the Scottish Partnerships (Register of People with Significant Control) Regulations 2017 (the “Regulations”) which were published on 26 June 2017, writes Catriona Reid.

Eligible Scottish Partnerships

The Regulations apply to “eligible Scottish partnerships” which include two forms of partnership:

Scottish general partnerships with at least one natural person as a partner do not fall within the persons with significant control regime.

Persons with Significant Control

An eligible Scottish Partnership can have more than one person with significant control. Under the Regulations a person with significant control is a person who meets one of the following criteria.

The first four are:

1. Ownership of the right to surplus assets on a winding up:

2. Ownership of voting rights:

3. Ownership of right to appoint or remove the persons entitled to manage the eligible Scottish partnership:

4. Significant influence or control:

The fifth criteria relates to trusts, partnerships etc where:

Timescales

Any current and eligible Scottish Partnership must deliver details of any persons with significant control to Companies House by 7 August 2017. If there are no persons with significant control, that information must also be sent to the registrar by the deadline of 7 August 2017.

With effect from 24 July 2017 any new eligible Scottish Partnerships will have to detail those Persons of Significant Control at the time of incorporation of the partnership.

Thereafter there will be an obligation to tell Companies House about changes in the persons with significant control position within 14 days of any change taking place, and confirm annually that the details of those persons with significant control are correct.

Responsibility

The eligible Scottish partnership is responsible for gathering the information and the persons with significant control are obliged to provide it. If the obligations are not satisfied (e.g. failure to provide, or for deliberately providing false information), an offence, punishable by fine, is committed by both the partnership and the individuals themselves.