Let’s start with the positives. At least, unlike other government agencies and local authorities / councils Companies House do answer the phone. Fair enough they do try to point you to incomplete incomprehensible online help first but if you hand in long enough they will pick up.

I had to get a what you’d imagine to be a simple issue resolved today, a change of correspondence address changed for a company director. Should be straight forward right? 

I called Companies House, hung on for about 15 minutes which considering it can take 30 minutes on hold to speak to the bank wasn’t too bad to be told my change had to be done online by filing a CH01 form. I was given no further instructions, just login, file the form and bobs your uncle.

I remember a time when you could just make a call and the helpful civil servant at the other end of the phone would sort you out. But hey I am pretty technical and her eagerness to get off the phone without any further assistance assured me it was a pretty easy task to complete.

After a bit of searching I found all the information I needed, my company number, gov.uk login email and password except I had no idea web filing in gov.uk is completely different to logging in to companies house.

I spent about 45 minutes navigating the companies house website after login, I searched the help files online for what appeared to be a very straightforward filing of the CH01 form. The instructions didn’t differentiate between the companies house website and online web filing at Gov.uk, two completely separate portals I later discovered.

Eventually I gave up and called Companies House back, I got cut off and was told to call back later, lines were too busy. I waited 10 minutes and called again. This time after another 10-15 minutes I did get through to someone who patiently talked me through the process, which I have to say wasn’t straight forward and even the expert on the other end of the phone wasn’t 100% familiar with the multiple screens she was guiding me through.

There were probably 10 or 12 different screens to navigate to get to the CH01 form I needed to make my one simple change. Without someone helping I don’t think anyone trying for the first time would have managed it. The navigation was clunking and not intuitive, like I said at the beginning not sure who designed these websites.

It would have been better to have a search facility to put in “CH01 form” and then be guided from there.

The key piece of information I was lacking was all web filing changes happen from gov.uk login not companies house. If you are looking through all the tabs on companies house, manage account, web filing etc, you are in completely the wrong portal.

I was asked for feedback after each of my three calls to Companies House.

I did finally manage to successful make the one simple change of address. It took about 90 minutes in total.

The main issue was the downplay of how easy it was by the first companies house agent, I suggest anyone attempting this themselves, get an agent on the phone at companies house and ask them to talk you through the navigation.

Even if they are reluctant it will save you loads of time trying to figure out the maze of prompts yourself.

The starting point for anyone attempting this task is to go to Gov.UK website and type in CH01 form in the search. I have put the link at the bottom of this snoop.