No one mentioned this? Companies house takes a leaf out of HMRC's book

[TykeMerc]

It's high time duty of care was enforced on the civil service and the government.

It matters not the consequences of their incompetence and negligence, people continue to have their lives ruined daily by such cretins.

Fair point. If they can be held to account properly and robustly then they might be motivated to reduce the cockup coefficient a lot.

Date of Incorporation: 22 August 1900.

So there's 115 years of effort down the tubes.

Yup, it's always a bit more saddening when you see it was an old firm killed off pointlessly.

[VectraMan]

Though the other question is why did they allow two companies to have almost identical names?

[FatLazyContractor]

Though the other question is why did they allow two companies to have almost identical names?

Eh? There are b0ll0ck-loads of companies with such similarities .....

[SueEllen]

Though the other question is why did they allow two companies to have almost identical names?

Because it's done on company number.

Plus when you choose a company name you can have a different trading name.

[rd409]

Got to think about this, but before the credit has been withdrawn, there must be some warning or notice! Why did they not take any action then? A press release would be less expensive than court case for sure. However I totally sympathize with them as a victim of somebody else's blunder.

[VectraMan]

Because it's done on company number.

I thought company names had to be unique.

Oh well. I'm off to register Apple Computers Ltd. and see what happens.

[lilelvis2000]

Because it's done on company number.

Plus when you choose a company name you can have a different trading name.

and I think that also if you are in a different area, so for example the other company was legal firm, than you can have a very similar name.

[SueEllen]

I thought company names had to be unique.

Oh well. I'm off to register Apple Computers Ltd. and see what happens.

You will be threatened with court action for infringing a trademark - which is a whole different area of law.

MacDonalds Restaurants use to go around the world threatening businesses who called themselves "Macdonald" or "Macdonalds" even if they were in different industries. They were finally taken to task by a restaurant in Singapore.

[NickFitz]

What strikes me here is how little care CH applied to their processes - there are *loads* of companies with similar names, so why wasn't there a rigorous procedure of checking something unique - like for instance the company registration number?

Apparently there was indeed a strict procedure in place, and one part of it was that the company number must be entered, and double-checked, on the relevant paperwork. However, many of CH's staff had never actually read the document defining the procedure, as they thought it was a training document and they figured they already knew what they were doing.

Shocking failure of management, but I'm sure they'll prove a lot more adept at finding some hapless junior to blame for the whole thing

[Zero Liability]

They'd probably have your head on a platter if you were the ones in error. Or maybe they haven't yet quite morphed into HMRC just yet.